Special counsel Jack Smith won’t get a chance to bring his best criminal case against Donald Trump to trial before the 2024 election — and if Trump wins, Smith probably will never get that chance. But on Wednesday, the public got its most complete look at the evidence Smith has amassed to try to prove that the former president orchestrated criminal conspiracies as he sought to overturn his loss four years ago.
In a 165-page legal brief unsealed by a federal judge (albeit with some redactions), the special counsel fleshed out detailed evidence he would use against Trump at trial, if the case ever makes it that far. Smith also presented his arguments for why Trump is not immune from the charges, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling over the summer that granted presidents broad immunity for official acts.
Much of Smith’s brief focused on Trump’s state of mind in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith described a slew of conversations suggesting that the then-president knew his claims of election fraud were spurious. And Smith laid out evidence that Trump’s sole objective was to stay in power — not, as he and his lawyers have claimed, to exercise legitimate authority over election integrity.
Here’s POLITICO’s look at the most significant and striking details in Smith’s brief.
..
….
Alone with his phone
At 2:24 p.m. on Jan. 6, as Trump supporters were attacking the Capitol, Trump took to Twitter to condemn Vice President Mike Pence, saying Pence lacked “courage” because Pence had resisted Trump’s pressure to intervene in the Electoral College certification.
According to Smith’s prosecutors, Trump was alone in the White House dining room when he sent that tweet. Trump’s aides had left him there after failing to persuade him to call on his supporters to leave the Capitol.
“The defendant personally posted the tweet … at a point when he already understood the Capitol had been breached,” prosecutors wrote.
Trump asked: ‘So what?’
The tweet criticizing Pence coincided with one of the most perilous moments of the riot: the precise minute Pence was being evacuated from his Senate office to a loading dock below the Capitol. Rioters had come within 40 feet of where he was sheltering just before this moment.
When Trump was told by an aide of Pence’s evacuation, prosecutors say Trump responded: “So what?”
….
______________
Read the article at
