- A judge released a motion detailing prosecutors’ new evidence in the January 6 case against Donald Trump.
- The motion by special counsel Jack Smith follows a revised indictment against the former president.
- Smith argues in the motion that Trump is not immune from criminal charges.
The federal judge overseeing the election interference case against Donald Trump has released prosecutors’ 165-page motion detailing a trove of evidence against the former president.
United States District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan released the motion by special counsel Jack Smith after Smith and his team hit Trump with a revised indictment in August that kept the same four counts against him.
The revamped indictment was a response to the US Supreme Court’s recent opinion, which gave presidents broad protection from prosecution for official acts.
A pressure campaign on the VP, in Pence’s own words
The court documents include a breakdown of Trump’s alleged pressure campaign against his vice president, Mike Pence — and it relied heavily on Pence’s own memoir.
Pence was a “key part of their plan to obstruct the certification proceeding,” the filing alleges.
It repeatedly quotes Pence’s memoir “So Help Me God” and internal memos where prosecutors say Trump’s co-conspirators “outlined a plan for Pence to ‘gavel’ in” Trump as the winner of the 2020 election.
Under the failed plan, Pence would make a false claim that “7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors,” the filing says, quoting from one memo.
Prosecutors allege the plan was to have Pence use the invented dispute as an excuse to essentially anoint Trump as the winner.
Pence continued to push back against the plan throughout the end of December 2020, even as “the defendant began to directly and repeatedly pressure Pence at the same time that he continued summoning his supporters to amass in Washington, DC, on the day of the congressional certification,” the filing reads.
“You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome,” Pence told Trump, a quotation the prosecutors lift from and credit to Pence’s memoir.
On December 28, Trump told Pence “hundreds of thousands” of people “are gone hate your guts,” the filing says, again quoting from the memoir.
“You’re too honest,” Trump complained, according to Pence.
“I’m gonna have to say you did a great disservice,” the filing — again quoting from the memoir — says as evidence that Trump threatened his vice president in a phone call on January 5, a day before certification.
“You gotta be tough tomorrow,” Trump also allegedly warned, in another call that night.
Thirty minutes later, at 10 p.m., Trump issued a false public statement reading: “The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”
Trump knew from Pence’s repeated refusals that this was a lie, but said it to exert further pressure, prosecutors allege. At 1 a.m. on January 6, Trump exerted still more pressure, falsely tweeting “If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency.”
After his final attempt to pressure Pence directly failed later that morning, Trump “sent to the Capitol a crowd of angry supporters, whom the defendant had called to the city and inundated with false claims of outcome-determinative election fraud, to induce Pence not to certify the legitimate electoral votes and to obstruct the certification,” the filing alleges.
Trump’s allies knew their plan was wrong
Prosecutors in the filing say that Trump and his co-conspirators knew Pence didn’t have the authority to name Trump president.
At least two co-conspirators knew they needed to hide their plotting, the prosecutors alleged.
According to the filing, when one asked in a text message, “Is Pence really likely to be on board with this?” another responded, “Let’s keep this off text for now.”
Smith argues Trump’s communications with Pence weren’t official
Prosecutors argued in their motion that Trump’s conversations with his then-vice president shouldn’t count as official presidential conduct.
“The only conduct alleged in the original indictment that the Supreme Court held was official, and subject to at least a rebuttable presumption of immunity, was the defendant’s attempts to lie to and pressure Vice President Pence to misuse his role as President of the Senate at the congressional certification,” Smith wrote.
“The Supreme Court stated that “[w]henever the President and Vice President discuss their official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct.”
Smith disagreed. The executive branch, they wrote, has no official role in the election certification process. Because of that, prosecuting Trump “poses no danger to the executive branch’s authority of functioning,” prosecutors wrote.
There’s evidence that Trump personally sent the ‘Mike Pence didn’t have courage’ tweet
Smith said that his team is prepared to call a key Trump official at trial who would testify that only Trump could have sent out his mid-Capitol riot tweet that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage” to overturn the election.
It’s unclear who the exact staffer in question, as his name was redacted.
Smith’s larger point is that, by proving Trump himself sent out the tweets, it shows that some of Trump’s actions were outside the scope of his official duties.
Smith also said evidence shows that Trump knew his claims about election fraud were false.
Smith says that Trump continued to lie about claims of widespread election fraud, even after Pence and a White House staffer and campaign staffer told him they weren’t true.
Trump appeared to mock his infamous ‘Release the Kraken’ lawyer behind her back
Trump lawyer Sidney Powell helped lead the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, repeatedly promising a trove of evidence akin to the mythical sea monster the Kraken.
But prosecutors’ court filing suggests Trump once privately mocked Powell — though the names in the filing are redacted. The filing alleged that during one phone call, Trump put the caller on mute and then “mocked and laughed at” her, “called her claims ‘crazy’ and made reference to the science fiction series Star Trek when describing her allegations.”
Based on the details given about the redacted name, it appears the person Trump mocked was Powell.
Her claims never stood up in court, and Powell and other Trump attorneys have faced formal sanctions for their actions since the Capitol riot.
Smith: Trump’s plan to overturn the election wasn’t an official duty
Ultimately, Smith’s filing argues that Trump is not immune from criminal charges tied to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith alleges at the top of the lengthy court filing.
While working with a group of “private co-conspirators,” Smith alleges that Trump “acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted — a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role.”
Trump has argued that anything he did around the election was part of his official duties as president, so he’s immune from prosecution.
And Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung bashed the motion and the case against Trump in a statement to Business Insider, saying: “The release of the falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine American Democracy and interfere in this election.”
Read the full court filing below:
Read the full article here
