Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Donald Trump for his 2020 election fraud actions, is making a Hail Mary pass on behalf of all of us. Because what does it say about America that we’re this dangerously close to putting someone in the White House who brazenly tried to upend democracy last time he was president?
Donald Trump won’t be prosecuted for his attempt to subvert the will of the people by using thoroughly debunked election fraud propaganda that was never presented with a shred of tangible evidence before the 2024 election? Those lies were at least some part of the factor that led to people having their lives threatened, injured and in some case, even taken. If Trump is successfully sent back to the Oval Office, it’s unlikely he will ever be prosecuted–despite his having proved himself to be the “threat to democracy” he complains about being called.
Jack Smith knows he won’t be able to present his case against Trump within the time frame the Court’s foisted upon him when it matters the most–before the elections. That’s why he has put all of his cards on the table through the release of a 165-page legal brief, which was recently unsealed by a federal judge. It details the extensive evidence he will present at trial provided his case ever makes it that far. Most of the contents of this document are far from shocking; Trump’s behavior and choices are a matter of public record.
However, they do highlight these important points: Trump knew he lost the election, he knew he would likely lose before the results were in, and he knew the damage and danger his propaganda campaign was causing. He just didn’t care.
From Politico:
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.
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?”
Trump’s first call for calm — which advisers viewed as insufficient — came 14 minutes later: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”
According to prosecutors, at one point during Trump’s bid to overturn the results, a Trump White House aide overheard Trump tell his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” The comment was allegedly made on Marine One.
Funny, isn’t it? Conservatives across the MAGA world have called Vice President Kamla Harris a terrorist sympathizer, just as they called Barack Obama when he was president, and yet neither of them instigated an act of domestic terrorism and then responded with defiant indifference as it unfolded in real-time.
You might recall that early on, right after Trump’s defeat in 2020, the ex-president’s main argument for why fraud cost him reelection was predicated on the fact that he was winning by a lot before mail-in votes were in. He decided, without evidence, to assert that mail-in votes must have been fraudulent.
Well, according to Smith’s document, there were several things that Trump was advised in the run up to Election Day in 2020.
First, his campaign advisers knew and advised their boss that “it would be a close contest and that it was unlikely to be finalized on election day—in part because of the time needed to process large numbers of mail-in ballots prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The brief goes further, stating that Trump’s advisers also “told the defendant that the initial returns on election night might be misleading—that is, that he might take an early lead in the vote count that would diminish as mail-in ballots were counted” because his supporters favored in-person voting while supporters of President Joe Biden prefer to vote by mail. According to the document, Trump was literally told by his own campaign that he would likely lose the 2020 election before he lost it.
Again, none of this is surprising, just like it’s no surprise that Trump cited voter fraud statistics the same way he presents virtually everything he calls facts: by conjuring them out of thin air.
More from Politico:
Prosecutors said they would prove at trial that Trump and his allies often made up statistics about voter fraud “from whole cloth.” For example, Trump and allies alleged that 36,000 noncitizens had cast ballots in Arizona, changing the figure to “a few hundred thousand” five days later, eventually revising it back to “bare minimum … 40 or 50,000,” then to 32,000 and back up to the original number of 36,000.
The brief goes on to accuse Trump of promising to present evidence of his fictitious voter fraud claims to election officials before welching on his promises to provide said evidence, which obviously did not exist. It details how Trump and his minions embarked on an intentional effort to “create chaos” at a polling center in Detroit once it became clear that Biden won and that the votes were legitimate. “Find a reason it isn’t,” one alleged co-conspirator said, according to prosecutors. That same co-conspirator allegedly said, “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!” after being warned of impending violence.
Make. Them. Riot.
Although a few passages in the document are redacted, you can read all of what’s been publicly shared here.
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