When an aide to Donald Trump told him that his vice president’s life was in danger during the riot of January 6, 2021, he had a two-word response: “So what?”
That’s just one of the damning details contained in a legal brief Jack Smith filed in his election subversion case against the former president. Unsealed Wednesday, the redacted 165-document provides the fullest picture of the evidence the special counsel has compiled against Trump—and should be a warning to the American electorate about the extraordinary danger he’d pose to democracy if he were to assume the presidency again. “In his capacity as a candidate,” Smith wrote, “the defendant used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”
In the filing, Smith argues not only that Trump “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office” after losing to Joe Biden but that his “scheme was a private criminal effort”—and therefore not covered by a shocking Supreme Court ruling over the summer that granted presidents “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions” undertaken as part of their official duties. “The defendant was acting in his capacity as a candidate for reelection,” Smith wrote, “not in his capacity as President.” Smith also includes several damning, previously unreported details about the actions Trump took after the 2020 election—and on January 6 specifically—as part of his effort to overturn the results. In all, they reveal a man who appears aware that he lost, but who nevertheless continued to push election fraud lies he knew to be false and even “crazy,” as he allegedly said of attorney Sidney Powell’s claims. “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” Trump told family members following his November defeat, according to Smith. “You still have to fight like hell.”
Smith also shed light on actions taken by Trump allies, including Rudy Giuliani, whose efforts to push a fake elector scheme in Michigan may have failed because he allegedly texted the resolution to the wrong number, and an unidentified campaign official, who allegedly encouraged chaos at a vote-count center in Detroit in 2020. “Make them riot,” the co-conspirator said, according to the filing.
Steven Cheung, spokesman for the Trump campaign, responded to the filing with typical belligerence, describing the case as “unconstitutional” and “partisan.” Trump, meanwhile, went berserk, posting on social media that the unsealed filing was an attempt by opponent Kamala Harris to “INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.” In a NewsNation interview later Wednesday, he claimed, “This was a weaponization of the government.”
Smith’s case—one of four felony prosecutions against the former president, who has already been convicted on 34 counts in New York—will not be brought before the November election, the outcome of which could determine whether Trump is ever tried for his attempts to overthrow democracy in 2020. But the filing unsealed Wednesday should give voters even more evidence to render their verdict on him next month.
