Special Counsel Jack Smith, in a court filing made public on Wednesday, revealed a litany of damning new allegations about former President Donald Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election—details that could impact the neck-and-neck presidential race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
After Trump’s 2020 presidential election defeat, “he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” the 165-page motion unsealed by Judge Tanya Chutkan says. “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.”
The filing adds new evidence that Trump knew his election fraud claims were false but proceeded anyway with a scheme to use so-called fake electors and outside pressure to stop Joe Biden’s electoral victory from being made official. Smith’s motion contains previously unreported information on Trump’s effort to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to illegally refuse to certify the election results on January 6, 2021.
The document directly faults Trump for inciting the mob of supporters who attacked Congress on January 6 as part of his effort to disrupt the certification proceedings that day. And it details Trump’s effort to “exploit”—rather than halt—the attack, in the hope that the violence would create an excuse for delaying certification.
The lightly redacted filing argues that Trump’s scheme to use bogus election fraud claims to stop Biden from taking office “was fundamentally a private one” and did not involve “official conduct.” If the courts accept that argument, the indictment could survive the expansive presidential “immunity” standard invented by the Supreme Court in its controversial July 1 decision.
But regardless of the fate of Smith’s legal case, the motion matters politically. It bolsters the argument that Trump’s disregard for the Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law leave him unfit to return to office. And it functions as a reminder for distractible voters about the seriousness of the charges against the first election loser in American history to incite violence in bid to retain power.
Trump’s lawyers fought unsuccessfully in court to block release of the motion based on the claim that it could affect the election, an argument Chutkan, who has repeatedly said she does consider Trump’s status as a presidential candidate to be relevant to her proceedings, rejected. Smith also filed an appendix that includes FBI interviews, grand jury testimony, and other evidence, which remains sealed, though parts of that could also be made public before election day.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed without evidence Wednesday that Smith’s motion was part of an effort by the Biden administration to “weaponize” the Justice Department against Trump. “The entire case is a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely, together with ALL of the remaining Democrat hoaxes,” Cheung said in a statement.
The new filing offers a general narrative that has previously been outlined by the media and the House January 6 Committee. But the document includes extensive details that have not been reported, along with a pointed new description of Trump’s conduct.
It says that Trump told three advisers before Election Day that, if he had an early lead in the vote count on election night due to slower counting of mail-in ballots—which were expected to favor Biden—he would “simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.”
Smith’s filing also cites audio from October 31, 2020, first revealed by Mother Jones. In it, Trump strategist Steve Bannon said that on election night, “Trump is gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.” Trump “did exactly that” on election night, the brief notes, claiming that he should have won but was a victim of voter fraud.
Smith’s brief reveals that shortly after the election, a Trump aide gave the president an “honest assessment” that his fraud claims would fail in court. “The details don’t matter,” Trump responded.
“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” Trump told members of his family at another point, according to the brief. “You still have to fight like hell.”
Smith alleges in the filing that Trump signed a “verification of fraud” that he knew was false as part of a lawsuit he filed aimed at overturning his defeat in Georgia. The motion notes that attorneys, whose names are redacted, told Trump that the document contained inaccurate claims. One lawyer told the president that any attorney who the signed the complaint the verification supported “would get disbarred.” Trump signed it anyway.
Smith also points out that even as Trump pressured state election officials in states where he was narrowly defeated to refuse to certify his loss, he didn’t bother checking with them on the validity of his claims. “These officials would have been the best sources of information to determine whether there was any merit to specific allegations of election fraud in their states,” but Trump “never contacted any of them to ask,” the motion says.
The filing also details Trump’s effort to pressure Pence to refuse to certify the election, despite the VP’s protestations that he lacked that power.
Pence, the filing reveals, repeatedly urged Trump to accept defeat. At a private lunch on November 12, Pence suggested that Trump, even if he refused to concede, should “recognize the process is over.” At another private lunch on December 21, Pence suggested Trump, once his legal efforts were exhausted, should “take a bow,” meaning admit defeat.
Pence’s refusal to break the law led Trump to include lines calling on the vice president to do “the right thing,” in his remarks, helping drive anger at Pence when he did not comply with Trump’s demands. According to Smith, Pence’s refusal left the president determined to use the mob he had assembled in Washington as a last-ditch means to pressure lawmakers not to certify his loss.
Trump knew that he had “only one last hope to prevent Biden’s certification as president, the large and angry crowd standing in front of him,” the filing says. “So for more than an hour, the defendant delivered a speech designed to inflame his supporters and motivate them to march to the Capitol.”
