Trump "resorted to crimes" to try to keep power in 2020, Jack Smith alleges
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Special Counsel Jack Smith announces indictment of former President Donald Trump on August 1, 2023 in Washington, D.C Photo: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Special counsel Jack Smith outlined in a motion unsealed by a judge on Wednesday what he called former President Trump's "increasingly desperate" efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results.
Why it matters: Trump and his legal team had opposed the motion, arguing it would interfere with the November election results. The filing unveils new details in connection to the Republican presidential nominee's Jan. 6 case.
- U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed the redacted motion on Wednesday.
State of play: Smith in the motion wrote that Trump's "scheme was a private criminal effort." He emphasized throughout the document that the former president was acting in his capacity as a candidate, not a president.
- This is an apparent attempt by Smith to respond to the bombshell Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that said that presidents have immunity for "official acts."
- "At its core, the defendant's scheme was a private one; he extensively used private actors and his Campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office," Smith wrote.
Zoom in: Smith also accused Trump of knowing "his fraud claims were false because he continued to make those claims even after his close advisors—acting not in an official capacity but in a private or campaign-related capacity—told him they were not true."
- "At one point long after the defendant had begun spreading false fraud claims, a White House staffer traveling with [Trump], overheard him tell family members that 'it doesn't matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell,'" Smith wrote.
- Smith also outlined numerous instances of Trump's former Vice President Mike Pence telling Trump that there was no evidence of fraud.
The special counsel wrote that "when all else had failed" for the former president in his bid to cling to power, he "directed an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification."
- He wrote that Trump used the false claims about the election to "inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding."
What they're saying: Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that the filing is "falsehood-ridden" and "Unconstitutional," again calling it an attempt to interfere with the November election.
Zoom out: Smith filed the sealed legal brief last week, leaving Chutkan to decide whether or not to publicly release it, or a redacted version of it.
- Prosecutors had said the brief contains previously unseen evidence.
- Trump's legal team argued in their own filing Tuesday that more redactions should be made if the brief was to be made public. They also objected to the release timing as early voting has already begun.
- Prosecutors responded Tuesday, saying they have "no role or interest in partisan politics."
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to charges in his federal election subversion case.
- The former president has been indicted across four criminal cases, but three of his four cases have been paused indefinitely or dismissed.
- Trump was convicted in a New York criminal trial earlier this year on 34 felony counts in the first degree of falsifying business records.
Go deeper: Jack Smith files evidence under seal against Trump in Jan. 6 case
Editor's note: This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
