- A judge issued a motion detailing prosecutors’ new evidence in the Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump.
- Special prosecutor Jack Smith’s motion 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 a 165-page motion from prosecutors detailing a trove of evidence against the former president.
United States District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan granted the motion by special counsel Jack Smith after Smith and his team hit Trump with a revised indictment in August that held the same four charges against him.
The renewed indictment was a response to The recent landmark opinion of the US Supreme Court, which provides presidents with broad protection from criminal prosecution for official acts.
Here are the main points, evidence and arguments from the prosecutors’ deposition:
Mike Pence. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Pence’s pressure campaign
The court documents include a summary of Trump’s alleged pressure campaign against his Vice President, Mike Pence.
Pence was a “key part of their plan to obstruct the certification process,” the filing said.
He repeatedly cites Pence’s memoir “So Help Me God” and internal memos in which Trump associates “describe a plan for Pence to ‘give’ the defendant the election winner.”
Under the failed plan, Pence would have asserted the false claim that “7 states have transmitted duplicate voter rolls,” the filing said, citing a memo.
Prosecutors allege the plan was for Pence to then use the fabricated dispute as an excuse to essentially unilaterally nominate Trump as the winner.
Trump and his associates knew Pence did not have the authority to do so, prosecutors wrote. And at least two accomplices knew they had to cover up their plot, they claimed.
According to the filing, when someone asked in a text message, “Is Pence likely to be on board with this?” another replied, “Let’s keep this text out of text for now.”
Pence continued to oppose the plan throughout late December 2020, even as “the defendant began to directly and repeatedly pressure Pence at the same time that he continued to call on his supporters to gather in Washington, DC, on the day of the Congress, confirmation”, the file says.
“You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome,” Pence told Trump, a quote from prosecutors and credit to Pence’s recollection.
On Dec. 28, Trump told Pence that “hundreds of thousands” of people “have gone to hate your guts,” the filing said, again quoting from the memo.
“You’re too honest,” Trump complained, according to Pence.
“I’d have to say you’ve done a lot of damage,” the document — again quoting from the memoir — says as evidence that Trump threatened his vice president in a call on Jan. 5, the day before the certification.
“You have to be tough tomorrow,” Trump allegedly warned, in another call that night.
Thirty minutes later, at 10 p.m., Trump issued a false public statement saying, “The Vice President and I are in complete agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”
Trump knew from Pence’s repeated denials that this was a lie, but said it was to apply further pressure, prosecutors allege. At 1 a.m. on January 6, Trump applied even more pressure, mistakenly tweeting: “If VP @Mike_Pence comes out for us, we win the Presidency.”
After his last-ditch effort to pressure Pence failed miserably later that morning, Trump “sent to the Capitol a mob of angry supporters whom the defendant had called into town and inundated with false allegations for result-determining election fraud, to induce Pence not to certify legitimate electoral votes and to obstruct certification,” the filing states.
President Donald Trump greets Vice President Mike Pence. Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images
Smith argues that Trump’s communications with Pence were not official
Prosecutors detail in their motion why they believe the then-vice president’s discussions with Trump should not be classified as official presidential conduct.
“The only alleged conduct 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 and pressure Vice President Pence to abuse the role his as President of the Senate on Congressional certification,” Smith wrote.
“The Supreme Court declared that”[w]whenever the President and Vice President discuss their official responsibilities, they are engaging in official conduct.”
Smith’s team disagrees. The executive, they write, has no official role in the election certification process.
“Because the Executive Branch has no role in the certification process—and indeed, the President was deliberately excluded from it—prosecuting the defendant for his corrupt efforts in connection with Pence poses no threat to the authority of the operation of the executive branch,” they continued.
Donald Trump. Win McNamee/Getty Images
There is evidence that Trump personally sent the “Mike Pence had no guts” tweet.
Smith said his team is prepared to subpoena a top Trump official who would testify that only Trump could have sent his tweet about the turmoil in the middle of the Capitol that “Mike Pence didn’t have the guts.” to overturn the election.
“The government will issue from [redacted] at trial that he was the only person other than the defendant with the ability to post on the defendant’s Twitter account, that he only sent tweets in the defendant’s express direction, and that [redacted] did not send several specific tweets, including one at 2:24 p.m. on January 6, 2021,” the filing said.
It is unclear which staff member is involved, as his name has been redacted.
Smith’s biggest issue is that by proving that Trump sent the tweets himself, it becomes clear that some of the then-president’s actions were outside the scope of his official duties.
Smith says the evidence shows Trump knew the election fraud claims were false
Smith says Trump continued to lie about election fraud, even after Pence and a White House staffer and the campaign trail told him he did.
“The evidence shows that the defendant knew that his allegations of fraud were false because he continued to make those allegations even after his close advisers – who were not acting in an official capacity but in a private or related capacity campaign — told him they weren’t true,” prosecutors. has written
Trump appeared to mock his infamous lawyer ‘Release the Kraken’ behind his back
Trump lawyer Sidney Powell helped lead efforts to overturn the 2020 election, repeatedly promising a trove of evidence similar to the mythical sea monster Kraken. Her claims were never supported. After January 6, Powell and other Trump lawyers faced formal sanctions for their actions.
According to Smith’s latest dossier, Trump also appears to have been privately mocking Powell — though the names in the dossier have been redacted.
“While [redacted] answered, the defendant placed the call on silent [redacted] AND [redacted] they joked and laughed [redacted] called her claims ‘crazy’ and referenced the science fiction series Star Trek when describing her claims,” the filing states.
Based on the details provided about the redacted name, it appears that the person Trump was mocking was Powell.
Smith: Trump’s plan to overturn the election was not an official job
Smith’s team responded to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling in the filing.
“Although the defendant was the incumbent during the alleged conspiracies, his scheme was essentially a private one,” Smith claims 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 numerous criminal means to subvert, through fraud and deceit, the function of government by which votes are collected and counted—a function in which defendant, as chairman, had no official role”.
Trump has argued that anything he did around the election was part of his official duties as president and thus he is immune from prosecution.
And Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung disputed the motion and the case against Trump in a statement to Business Insider, saying, “Releasing the unconstitutional lie-filled J6 summary right after Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance is another attempt apparent from the Harris-Biden Regime to undermine American Democracy and interfere in this election”.
Read the full court filing below: