Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump makes a campaign stop at manufacturing company FALK Productions in Walker, Michigan, USA, on September 27, 2024.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
A federal judge on Wednesday released an amended motion from Special Counsel Jack Smith detailing evidence against former President Donald Trump in his election interference case in Washington, D.C.
Smith’s 165-page filing says the Republican presidential candidate could still be prosecuted for his efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss, despite the Supreme Court ruling in July that Trump has presumptive immunity for official campaign actions. insisted.
“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he committed crimes to remain in office,” Smith wrote.
“The defendant, along with his private co-conspirators, began a series of increasingly desperate schemes to overturn the legitimate election results in the seven states he lost,” he wrote.
Judge Tanya Chutkan released the documents less than five weeks before President Trump faces Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
If Trump is elected, he will have the power to order the Justice Department to dismiss criminal cases against him.
Trump has argued that his attempts to undo President Joe Biden’s election victory constituted official acts of the president, but were not prosecuted because of the high court’s immunity ruling.
“No,” Smith wrote in Wednesday’s filing. “Although the defendant was a sitting president at the time of the alleged conspiracy, his plans were essentially private.”
“Trump acted as a candidate when he pursued a variety of criminal means to interfere with the government’s function of collecting and counting votes through fraud and deception,” Smith wrote. He pointed out that the president has no “official role” in that role.
Smith urged Chutkan to rule that Trump “should be tried for his private crimes like any other citizen.”
In response to the filing, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung suggested, without evidence, that the timing of the release amounted to a deliberate effort to disrupt Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s debate performance Tuesday night.
“Crazy Jack Smith and the Washington DC Radical Democrats are hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department to stay in power,” said Rep. Cheong, adding, “The election lawsuits against Trump should be completely dismissed.”
Wednesday’s extensive filing details the arguments and evidence federal prosecutors will present if the case goes to trial.
Some of the evidence appears to have never been reported before.
For example, the filing says that on November 4, 2020, campaign staff and Trump’s “conspirators” attempted to sow confusion about the ongoing vote count at the TCF Center in Detroit, which “looked unfavorable” to Trump.
The documents say that when the co-conspirator was told that the majority of votes appeared to heavily favor Biden, he responded by telling him to “find a reason why that’s not the case” and “giving me the option to file a lawsuit.” “Even so,” he adds.
When a co-conspirator suggested to a co-conspirator that this risked creating a scene reminiscent of the so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot” (the infamous attempt to disrupt Florida’s vote-counting efforts in the 2000 presidential election), the co-conspirator “took them into a riot,” according to the filing. I replied, ‘Make it happen’ and ‘Try it!!!’
The special prosecutor also presented numerous examples, stating that then-Vice President Mike Pence tried to ‘gradually and gently’ persuade President Trump to accept his election defeat.
On November 7, 2020, as major media outlets called the race for Biden, Pence attempted to “encourage” Trump to accept that the race was over, telling the president, “You’re going to take over a dying party and give it a new lease on life.” “I gave it to you,” he said. Life,’ the records say.
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington on November 5, 2020, and speaks about the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
And at a private lunch on Nov. 12, Pence offered Trump a potential way to save face politically and scale back challenges to the election results. “Don’t give in and recognize that the process is over,” Pence told his boss. , according to the documents.
At another private lunch four days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the election results and run again in 2024, the filing said.
According to the document, President Trump responded, “2024 is too far away.”
On Dec. 21, Pence “encouraged” Trump not to “see the election as a ‘loss’ and just a break,” the filing says.
Later that day, Trump asked Vice President Pence in the Oval Office: “What do you think we should do?”
Vice President Pence responded that all options had been exhausted and that “if it is still not enough, President Trump should bow his head.”
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who led false claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election, features prominently in the special counsel’s filing.
Trump has “excluded” campaign staffers who told the truth about his loss as he pursues protracted litigation to overturn his losses in key states. Instead, he increasingly turned to Giuliani, a “private lawyer who sought to falsely claim victory,” the special counsel alleged.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, personal lawyer to U.S. President Donald Trump, holds a document while speaking about the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election at a press conference held in Washington, U.S., on November 19, 2020.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Giuliani, referred to in the redacted filing as “CC1,” short for co-conspirator #1, has at times made claims so patently false that he has been publicly rebuked by fellow Republicans.
For example, after Giuliani falsely claimed that Pennsylvania collected far more absentee ballots than it mailed, Justin Riemer, then a senior adviser to the Republican National Committee, responded to Giuliani’s claims, saying, “This is not true.” I posted this on Twitter.
According to the filing, Riemer expressed concerns in a private email that what Giuliani and others were doing was “a joke and being laughed out of court.”
The special counsel alleged that after Giuliani learned of Riemer’s tweets and emails, the former New York mayor called Riemer and left a threatening voicemail.
“I really need an explanation of what you said today. If nothing good comes out of it, you’re going to have to resign. Okay? So, call me. Or I’ll call your boss and tell him to resign. Call him. He will.” It will be better for you that way,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani also urged then-RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to fire Riemer, the filing alleges.
The special counsel later wrote that Riemer had been “removed from his duties.”
A representative for Giuliani did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
