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.