By Steve Neavling
Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled fresh details on Wednesday about former President Trump and his allies’ extensive and “increasingly desperate” attempts to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election.
The revelations come in a court filing defending Smith’s prosecution of Trump, following the Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity, ABC News reports.
Prosecutors asserted in the 165-page filing that Trump knowingly lied to the public, state officials, and his own vice president in an attempt to hold on to power, despite privately dismissing some of the fraud claims as “crazy.”
“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to illegal actions to remain in office,” the filing stated. “Working with private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly frantic efforts to reverse the valid election results in seven states that he had lost.”
When legal challenges and efforts to use fraudulent electors failed, prosecutors alleged that Trump incited violence, claiming he was the driving force behind the events that led to the January 6 insurrection.
“The defendant was aware that his final opportunity to stop Biden’s certification as president lay with the angry crowd gathered before him. For over an hour, the defendant delivered a speech aimed at stirring up his supporters and directing them to march on the Capitol,” Smith detailed in the filing.
This document, which includes an 80-page summary of evidence collected by investigators, highlights numerous instances where Trump was informed by his advisers that his fraud claims were unfounded, yet he continued promoting the allegations.
“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell,” Trump reportedly told his family members after the election, according to the filing.
In response, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung denounced the court filing, accusing it of trying to influence the upcoming election.
“This entire case is a partisan, unconstitutional witch hunt that should be thrown out,” Cheung stated.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, also weighed in on accusations of bias from the defense.
“Defendant’s opposition brief repeatedly accuses the Government of bad-faith partisan bias,” Chutkan noted in her order allowing the redacted filing to be made public. “These claims, which lack evidence, reflect a continuing pattern by the defense to focus on political rhetoric instead of addressing the legal issues.”
“This approach not only fails to assist the court but is also inappropriate for experienced defense counsel and detrimental to the judicial process,” Judge Chutkan added. “Future filings should concentrate on the relevant legal matters before the court.”
Prosecutors also contended that Trump’s efforts to undermine the election began long before November 2020, including by raising doubts about the voting process among his supporters and planning to declare victory prematurely, despite his advisers cautioning that results would not be final on Election Day.
Additionally, the filing alleges that Trump and his allies sought to disrupt vote counts at various polling locations, citing an incident in Detroit where a campaign employee encouraged a colleague to incite chaos at a ballot-counting center. This turmoil, the filing states, was later used by Trump to support his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
“The common thread through all these actions was deceit: both the defendant’s and his co-conspirators’ deliberate falsehoods regarding election fraud,” the filing concluded.
