Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles on Sept. 13.ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump privately described claims of fraud in the 2020 election as “crazy,” even as he was using those claims to orchestrate a sweeping campaign to overturn the result of the vote, special counsel Jack Smith says in a new court filing.
The 165-page document lays out the greatest detail so far in Mr. Smith’s case against Mr. Trump, who faces four federal criminal charges for trying to reverse his election defeat by Joe Biden. And it alleges that Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators knew full well that their assertions of election-rigging were false.
Mr. Smith filed the brief to persuade Justice Tanya Chutkan that the prosecution against Mr. Trump should continue despite a Supreme Court ruling in July that granted him limited immunity.
In the ruling, the court’s conservative majority held that U.S. presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts. Mr. Smith argues that Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election were undertaken in his capacity as a candidate, and not as president, and therefore constituted private actions.
“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” Mr. Smith’s filing reads. “The defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.”
In a lengthy narrative, drawing on grand-jury testimony, interviews by investigators and communications between people involved, the document describes how Mr. Trump and a group of loyalists “launched a series of increasingly desperate plans” to press Republican state officials and then-vice-president Mike Pence to overturn the election result.
“The through line of these efforts was deceit: the defendant’s and co-conspirators’ knowingly false claims of election fraud,” it says.
When they failed, Mr. Trump called his supporters to Washington and sent them to the Capitol, which they stormed on Jan. 6, 2021. Informed that the rioters were hunting Mr. Pence, who had to be rushed to safety, the filing says Mr. Trump shrugged it off to a staffer: “So what?”
The filing details many occasions in which people close to Mr. Trump told him the election had not been stolen, and at least two in which Mr. Trump indicated that he was aware of this.
During a phone call with one of his lawyers pushing the election-fraud claims, the document says, Mr. Trump muted himself, then “mocked and laughed” at the lawyer and “called her claims ‘crazy’ ” to two aides listening in on the call. The document does not name the lawyer but provides details that identify her as Sidney Powell, one of the top figures leading Mr. Trump’s election legal challenges.
On another occasion, a White House staffer overheard Mr. Trump tell members of his family, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell,” the document says.
Even if Mr. Smith is able to continue the prosecution, the case will not go to trial until well after the Nov. 5 election, in which Mr. Trump is vying to return to the White House. If he does, he is expected to intervene to stop the case against him.
The matter has been central to the election, with Democrats suggesting that Mr. Trump, a Republican, would use a return to presidential power to overturn future election results he does not like.
In the vice-presidential debate Tuesday, J.D. Vance, Mr. Trump’s running mate, claimed that Mr. Trump “peacefully gave over power” after the vote. When Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate, challenged Mr. Vance to affirm that Mr. Trump lost in 2020, Mr. Vance refused to say.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” he replied. Mr. Walz fired back: “That is a damning non-answer.”
Mr. Smith cites a number of Republicans who conceded among themselves that there was no election fraud but tried to overturn the vote anyway.
In one exchange between two of Mr. Trump’s campaign officials, one told the other that a batch of ballots favouring Mr. Biden being counted in Detroit was “right.” The second campaign official replied, “Find me a reason it isn’t” and “give me options to file litigation.”
The first operative expressed fear of a repeat of the Brooks Brothers Riot, an incident after the 2000 election in which Republicans violently tried to shut down ballot counting.
“Make them riot,” the second official wrote back, according to the document. “Do it!!!”
A newly unsealed court filing lays out fresh details from the landmark criminal case against former president Donald Trump after trying to overturn the 2020 election. It argues that the former president is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.
The Associated Press