A federal judge on Wednesday opened a motion drafted by Special Counsel Jack Smith detailing evidence against former President Donald Trump in the criminal election interference case in Washington, DC
The 165-page document was submitted by Smith as part of his argument that Trump could still be prosecuted for trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat despite a Supreme Court ruling in July that he has presidential immunity for official acts.
Judge Tanya Chutkan opened the filing less than five weeks before Republican nominee Trump will face Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in the 2024 presidential election.
If Trump wins the election, he will have the power to order the Justice Department to drop the criminal case against him.
“The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for the criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it was an official act. That is not the case,” Smith’s office said in the filing.
“Although the defendant was the current President during the alleged conspiracy, the scheme was fundamentally personal,” the filing said. “Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate while pursuing various criminal methods to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the functions of the government in which votes are collected and counted – a function in which the defendant, as President, has no official role.”
The filing said Chutkan must reject arguments that Trump is immune from other charges not barred by the Supreme Court’s decision.
The motion said that after the November election, as Trump “claimed (ballot fraud) without evidence, his private operators sought to create chaos, rather than seek clarity at the polling places where states continue to tabulate votes.”
The filing alleges that on November 4, 2020, Trump’s campaign employees and “co-conspirators” attempted to spread confusion about the vote count being conducted at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan, which “appears to be unfavorable” to Trump.
The employee’s name has been redacted in the filing, which contains many such redactions of individual names and other details.
When a colleague of the unidentified campaign employee told the man that some of the votes appeared to be overwhelmingly in favor of Joe Biden, the employee replied “find an excuse that doesn’t exist,” “give the option to file litigation” and “even.” if (it bs),” said the submission.
“When the colleague suggested that there would be riots like the Brooks Brothers Riot” during the vote in Florida in the 2000 election, the campaign staff “responded with ‘Make a riot’ and ‘Do it!!!,'” the motion claims.
The filing also provided several examples of how Vice President Mike Pence allegedly tried to “gradually and gently” convince Trump to accept election defeat.
On November 7, 2020, as a major news outlet called the race for Biden, Pence “tried to support” Trump, saying, “You’re taking a dying political party and giving it a new lease on life,” according to the filing.
And at a private lunch on November 12, Pence offered Trump a way to stop saving face while ending the challenge: “Don’t admit it but recognize (the process) is over,” prosecutors wrote.
Four days later, Pence at another private lunch was accused of trying to urge Trump to accept the election results and run again in 2024.
Trump replied, “I don’t know, 2024 is too far away,” according to the filing.
On Dec. 21, Pence allegedly “encouraged” Trump to “not show up in the election ‘as a loss — just an intermission,'” the filing said.
Later that day, Trump asked Pence in the Oval Office, “What do you think we should do?”
Pence replied that if all options were exhausted and “we are still short, (the defendant) should ‘take a bow,'” according to the filing.
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