Donald Trump launched a “private criminal effort” to subvert the 2020 US election and should not be shielded by presidential immunity, Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a court filing unsealed on Wednesday.
Smith, in a 165-page motion arguing for the historic case against Trump to move forward, also provided new evidence of the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump, 78, the Republican candidate in November’s White House election, was to go on trial in March but the case was frozen while his lawyers argued that a former president should be immune from criminal prosecution.
The Supreme Court ruled in July that an ex-president has immunity from prosecution for official acts while in office, but can be pursued for unofficial acts.
Smith, in the filing unsealed by District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is hearing the case, said that Trump should not escape prosecution because “at its core, the defendant’s scheme was a private criminal effort”.
“The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct,” Smith said. “Not so.”
“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one.”
Trump, acting as a candidate and not in his official capacity, “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office”, the special counsel said.
“With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost,” he said.
Trump’s efforts allegedly included lying to state officials, manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes and seeking to get then-Vice-President Mike Pence to obstruct congressional certification of Biden’s victory.
“When all else had failed,” the special counsel said, Trump directed an “angry crowd” of supporters to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to disrupt the certification.
According to Smith’s filing, a White House staffer told Trump during the January 6 rioting at the Capitol that Pence had been taken to a secure location, to which the president replied “So what?”
Smith said there was abundant evidence that Trump knew his claims of electoral fraud were false because advisers had told him so.
Trump, in a post on Truth Social after the filing was unsealed, said: “Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING.”
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung blasted the disclosures, saying: “This entire case is a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely, together with ALL of the remaining Democrat hoaxes.”
Chutkan has not set a date for a trial but it will not be held before the November 5 election between Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Donald Trump
