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Prosecutors Lay Out New Trump Evidence 10/03 06:14
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the
2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud
and "resorted to crimes" in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a
court filing unsealed Wednesday that offers new evidence from the landmark
criminal case against the former president.
The filing from special counsel Jack Smith's team offers the most
comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case
charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Although
a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have
chronicled in stark detail Trump's efforts to undo the election, the filing
cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump's closest aides to paint a
portrait of an "increasingly desperate" president who, while losing his grip on
the White House, "used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process."
"So what?" the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being advised
that his vice president, Mike Pence, had been rushed to a secure location after
a crowd of violent Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,
to try to prevent the counting of electoral votes.
"The details don't matter," Trump said, when told by an adviser that a
lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn't be able to prove the
false allegations in court, the filing states.
The brief was made public over the Trump legal team's objections in the
final month of a closely contested presidential race in which Democrats have
sought to make Trump's refusal to accept the election results four years ago
central to their claims that he is unfit for office. The issue flared as
recently as Tuesday night's vice presidential debate when Minnesota Gov. Tim
Walz, a Democrat, lamented the violence at the Capitol while a Republican
opponent, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, refused to directly answer when asked whether
Trump had lost the 2020 race.
The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court
opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts
they take in office, a decision that narrowed the scope of the prosecution and
eliminated the possibility of a trial before next month's election.
The purpose of the brief is to persuade U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan
that the offenses charged in the indictment were undertaken in Trump's private,
rather than presidential, capacity and can therefore remain part of the case as
it moves forward. Chutkan permitted a redacted version to be made public, even
though Trump's lawyers argued that it was unfair to unseal it so close to the
election.
Though the prospects of a trial are uncertain, particularly if Trump wins
the presidency and a new attorney general seeks the dismissal of the case, the
brief nonetheless functions as a roadmap for the testimony and evidence
prosecutors would elicit before a jury. It is now up to Chutkan to decide which
of Trump's acts are official conduct for which Trump is immune from prosecution
and which are, in the words of Smith's team, "private crimes" on which the case
can proceed.
"Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged
conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one," Smith's team wrote,
adding, "When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to
crimes to try to stay in office."
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the brief "falsehood-ridden"
and "unconstitutional" and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and
Democrats were "hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department." Trump, in a
separate post on his Truth Social platform, said the case would end with his
"complete victory."
The filing alleges that Trump "laid the groundwork" for rejecting the
election results before the contest was over, telling advisers that in the
event he held an early lead he would "declare victory before the ballots were
counted and any winner was projected."
Immediately after the election, prosecutors say, his advisers sought to sow
chaos in the counting of votes. In one instance, a campaign employee described
as a Trump co-conspirator was told that results favoring Democrat Joe Biden at
a Michigan polling center appeared accurate. The person is alleged to have
replied: "find a reason it isnt" and "give me options to file litigation."
Prosecutors also alleged that Trump advanced claims of fraud despite knowing
they were false, recounting how he conceded to others that allegations of
election irregularities made by attorney Sidney Powell were "crazy" and
referenced the science fiction series "Star Trek." Even so, days later, he
promoted on Twitter a lawsuit she was about to file.
In demonstrating his apparent indifference to the accuracy of the election
fraud claims, prosecutors also cite an account of a White House staffer who
after the election overheard Trump telling his wife, daughter and son-in-law on
Marine One: "It doesn't matter if you won or lost the election. You still have
to fight like hell."
The filing also includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence,
including a private lunch on Nov. 12, 2020, in which Pence "reiterated a
face-saving option" for Trump, telling him, "Don't concede but recognize the
process is over."
In another lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the election
results and run again in 2024.
"I don't know, 2024 is so far off," Trump told him, the filing states.
Prosecutors say that by Dec. 5, the defendant was starting to think about
Congress' role in the process.
"For the first time, he mentioned to Pence the possibility of challenging
the election results in the House of Representatives," it says, citing a phone
call.
But, prosecutors wrote, Trump "disregarded" Pence "in the same way he
disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his
allies' legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states
-- including those in his own party -- who stated publicly that he had lost and
that his specific fraud allegations were false."
Pence chronicled some of his interactions with Trump, and his eventual split
with him, in a 2022 book called "So Help Me God." He also was ordered to appear
before the grand jury investigating Trump after courts rejected claims of
executive privilege.
Prosecutors also argue Trump used his Twitter account to spread false claims
of election fraud, attacking "those speaking the truth" about his loss and
exhorting his supporters to travel to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021,
certification.
They intend to use "forensic evidence" from Trump's iPhone to provide
insight into Trump's actions after the Capitol attack.
Of the more than 1,200 Tweets Trump sent during the weeks detailed in the
indictment, prosecutors say, the vast majority were about the 2020 election,
including those falsely claiming Pence could reject electors even though the
vice president had told Trump that he had no such power.
That "steady stream of disinformation" culminated in his speech at the
Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, where Trump "used these lies to inflame
and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the
Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding," prosecutors wrote.
His "personal desperation was at its zenith" that morning as he was "only
hours from the certification proceeding that spelled the end," prosecutors
wrote.
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