Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, deliberately pushing false claims of voter fraud and “resorting to crimes” in his failed attempt to cling to power, according to a newly unsealed court filing from prosecutors New details of the landmark criminal case brought Against the former president.
The filing by special counsel Jack Smith’s team offers the most comprehensive view yet of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn the election goes to trial. Although the months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the new dossier cites previously little-known accounts provided by Trump’s closest aides to paint a picture of an “increasingly desperate” president who, while losing office, is The White House “used deception to target every stage of the election process.”
“so what?” The file quoted Trump as telling an aide after he was alerted that his vice president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a mob of violent supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“The details don’t matter,” Trump said when an adviser told him that the lawyer who was raising his legal challenges would not be able to prove the false allegations in court, as the filing states.
The request was filed, initially under seal, in the wake of a Supreme Court opinion that granted broad immunity to former presidents for official acts they take in office, narrowing the scope of the claim accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrats. Joe Biden.
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The purpose of this brief is to convince U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the crimes cited in the indictment are private, not official, and therefore can remain part of the indictment as the case progresses. Chutkan allowed a revised version to be released to the public.
“Although the defendant was the sitting president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was essentially a private scheme,” Smith’s team wrote, adding: “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he turned to crimes to try to remain in office.”
Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Cheung called the brief “full of lies” and “unconstitutional,” and repeated repeated claims that Smith and Democrats are “heavily intent on weaponizing the Department of Justice in an effort to cling to power.”
“Releasing the lie-filled and unconstitutional J6 brief immediately after Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance is another clear attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine American democracy and interfere in this election.”
The dossier includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on November 12, 2020, where Pence “reiterated the face-saving option” to Trump, telling him: “Don’t concede but acknowledge the violations.” The operation is over,” according to prosecutors.
At another private lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the election results and run again in 2024.
“I don’t know, 2024 is too far away,” Trump told him, according to the file.
But Trump “ignored” Pence “in the same way he ignored dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and ignored officials in targeted states — including those in his own party — who publicly stated that he and his party’s specific fraud allegations were false,” prosecutors wrote. False.
Trump’s “continuous flow of misinformation” in the weeks following the election culminated in his Ellipse speech on the morning of January 6, 2021, in which Trump “used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters who marched to the Capitol and disrupted the certification proceedings,” prosecutors wrote. .
& Edition 2024 The Canadian Press
