One gruesome detail in Jack Smith’s sweeping legal brief about Donald Trump’s involvement in January 6 has shocked legal experts.
The 165-page filing, which was unsealed Wednesday by Judge Tanya Chutkan, provides new details about the co-conspirators and specific allegations connected to the former president’s 2020 election-subversion scheme—including one about former Vice President Mike Pence.
As MAGA rioters swarmed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, chanting their demand to “Hang Mike Pence!” a Trump aide received word that his running mate had been moved to a secure location for his safety, according to the filing.
The aide “rushed into the dining room to inform [Trump] in hopes that [Trump] would take action to ensure Pence’s safety.”
Instead, after the aide delivered the news, Trump allegedly replied, “So what?”
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said Wednesday night, during an interview with MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace, that she was taken aback by multiple moments described in the filing, but Wallace plucked that one out as the most disturbing.
“I’ll read first what made Lisa Rubin gasp. Why make everybody wait?” said Wallace, before reading from page 142.
“The cavalierness with which Donald Trump received that news certainly is news to me,” Rubin said.
During an interview on CNN Wednesday, Harvard constitutional law professor Lawrence Tribe told host Erin Burnett he also found that quote to be one of the most outlandish.
“There are lots of jaw-dropping things; you’ve named some of them. You know: ‘So what’ if this vice president is hung? ‘It doesn’t matter’ whether we’ve won or lost. That’s just a sampling; it’s the tip of a horribly large and scary iceberg,” Tribe explained.
In the filing, Trump allegedly made a comment to his family members that “it doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election, you still have to fight like hell.”
