Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump makes a stop at the campaign trail of manufacturer FALK Production in Walker, Michigan, US, September 27, 2024.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
A federal judge on Wednesday unsealed a redacted move by Special Counsel Jack Smith detailing evidence against former President Donald Trump in the Washington, DC election interference case
Smith’s 165-page filing argued that the Republican presidential nominee could be prosecuted for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, despite a Supreme Court ruling in July that Trump has presumptive immunity for his official presidential deeds.
“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” Smith wrote.
“With private co-conspirators, defendant began a series of increasingly desperate schemes to overturn legitimate election results in seven states he had lost,” he wrote.
Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed the file less than five weeks before Trump faces Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in the 2024 presidential election.
If Trump wins the election, he will have the power to order it Ministry of Justice for the dismissal of the criminal case against him.
Trump has argued that his efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory amounted to official presidential conduct, which was protected from prosecution by the high court’s immunity ruling.
“Not so,” Smith wrote in Wednesday’s filing. “Although the defendant was the sitting President at the time of the charged conspiracies, his scheme was essentially private.”
Trump “acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deception, the operation of government through which votes are collected and counted,” Smith wrote. He noted that the president “has no official role” in this function.
Smith urged Chutkan to rule that Trump “should be tried for his private crimes like any other citizen.”
In response to the filing, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chung suggested, without evidence, that the timing of the release amounted to a deliberate attempt to distract from Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s performance in Tuesday’s debate. night.
“The deranged Jack Smith and the Radical Democrats in Washington are seeking to weaponize the Department of Justice in an attempt to cling to power,” Chung said, adding that the election case against Trump “must be dismissed outright.”
Wednesday’s extensive filing detailed the arguments and evidence federal prosecutors will present if the case ever goes to trial.
Some of these items do not appear to have been previously reported.
For example, the filing said that on Nov. 4, 2020, a campaign worker and Trump “conspirator” tried to sow confusion about vote counting underway at the TCF Center in Detroit, which “appeared unfavorable” to Trump.
The filing said that when the conspirator was told that a batch of votes appeared to be overwhelmingly in favor of Biden, he replied, “find a reason it’s not,” so as to “give me options to file a lawsuit.” adding, “even if [is].”
When a colleague suggested to the co-conspirator that this might create a scene reminiscent of the so-called “Brooks Brothers riot” — an infamous attempt to interfere with Florida’s 2000 presidential vote count effort — the co-conspirator “replied, “Get them fired up” and “Do it!!!,” according to the filing.
The special counsel also wrote that then-Vice President Mike Pence tried “gradually and gently” to convince Trump to accept his election defeat, providing several examples.
On November 7, 2020, as major news outlets called the race for Biden, Pence “tried to encourage” Trump to accept that the race is over, telling the president, “You’ve taken a dying political party and given it a new lease on life. life,” according to the filing.
President Donald Trump arrives to speak about the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Nov. 5, 2020.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
And at a private dinner on Nov. 12, Pence offered Trump a possible way to save face politically and also resolve his challenges to the election results: “Don’t admit, but recognize [the] The process is over,” Pence told his boss, according to the filing.
Four days later, at another private dinner, Pence tried to urge Trump to accept the election results and run again in 2024, the filing said.
Trump replied, “I don’t know, 2024 is so far away,” according to the filing.
On Dec. 21, Pence “encouraged” Trump “not to see the election ‘as a loss — just a break,'” the filing said.
Later that day, Trump asked Pence in the Oval Office, “What do you think we should do?”
Pence responded that if all options were exhausted and “we’ve exhausted the limits,” then Trump “should ‘bow out,'” according to the filing.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a leading proponent of false allegations of voter fraud after the 2020 election, figures prominently in the special counsel’s file.
As Trump pursued long-running lawsuits to overturn his losses in key states, he was “outcasted” by campaign staff who told him the truth about his defeat. Instead, he increasingly turned to Giuliani, “a private attorney who was willing to falsely claim victory,” the special counsel alleged.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump, holds documents as he talks about the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election during a news conference in Washington, U.S., November 19, 2020.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Giuliani, who is referred to in the redacted filing as “CC1,” short for co-conspirator #1, at times made claims so patently false that they were openly decried by fellow Republicans.
For example, after Giuliani falsely claimed that Pennsylvania had collected far more completed absentee ballots than it had mailed, Justin Riemer, then chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, he tweeted about Giuliani’s claim, writing, “This is not true.”
In a private email, Riemer expressed concern that what Giuliani and others “are doing is a joke and they are being laughed out of court,” according to the filing.
The special counsel alleged that after Giuliani learned of Rimer’s tweet and email, the former New York mayor called Rimer and left him a threatening voicemail.
“I really need an explanation for what you said today because if there isn’t a good one, you should resign. Got it? So call me or I’ll call the boss and get you to resign. Call me. It would be better for you if you do Giuliani reportedly said.
Giuliani also urged then-RNC Chairwoman Rona McDaniel to fire Rimer, according to the filing.
Rimer was subsequently “relieved of his duties,” the special counsel wrote.
A representative for Giuliani did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
