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The Striking Details That Jack Smith Used To Tighten His January 6 Case Against Trump 



 
WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 01:  Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to deliver remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former U.S. President Donald Trump on August 1, 2023 in Washin...
WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 01:  Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to deliver remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former U.S. President Donald Trump on August 1, 2023 in Washington, DC. Trump was indicted on four felony counts for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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By Josh Kovensky
|

                        October 3, 2024 5:48 p.m. 






















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Special Counsel Jack Smith laid out his most detailed case yet in a filing unsealed Wednesday for why Trump can still be prosecuted in spite of the Supreme Court’s capacious immunity decision. 

It’s partly a dare to the Supreme Court, asking it — assuming the matter works its way up again from Judge Tanya Chutkan’s chambers to the high court — to outright declare that Trump’s effort to thwart the 2020 election formed part of his official duties.

In so doing, Smith gave a more precise and detailed account of key moments in which Trump allegedly violated the law. 

Critically, Smith provided tighter evidence in three specific areas:


Trump allegedly knew that he had lost the 2020 election and chose to fight anyway. 

The aim of the attempt to delay certification of the election on January 6 was for leverage to “negotiate” a Trump victory, diverging from the way in which the U.S. has picked a President for more than two centuries.

Trump and those around him saw and used violence as a means of winning the post-election fight.


Staying in the Fight

Both before and after the election, Smith alleges, Trump was determined to declare victory regardless of the outcome.

This is not surprising on its face — as early as 2016, Trump refused to commit to respecting the result of the election if he lost. It’s long been part of the Trump brand: he’ll fight even if he knows he’s wrong, just to keep fighting.

But Smith refines this in the filing with new details that suggest Trump’s view of the results was blithe disregard. As the former President allegedly told family members after the election, “it doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

Before votes were being cast, Smith wrote, Trump told advisers that “he would simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.” 

There are a few moments in which Smith alleges that Trump boosted information that he knew to be false. Smith had earlier alleged that various public officials and Trump associates told the former President that claims of voter fraud were bogus. But the filing unsealed on Wednesday puts a finer point on it by showing, in at least one instance, that Trump reacted to nonsensical claims in the way that much of the country did: by calling them “crazy.” 

That episode centers on Sidney Powell, the attorney who accused Hugo Chavez of stealing the election at an infamous mid-November press conference. The next day, Smith said, Trump put Powell on speakerphone during a call. He then muted it, and proceeded to call her claims “crazy” and make a “Star Trek” reference to what she was saying.

Trump later boosted lawsuits that Powell filed based on the same claims. Other officials around Trump were in the odd position of pushing back against claims that Trump may have understood were false. 

At one point, Smith said, Trump demanded that RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel push an allegation that Michigan voting machines had been hacked. The speaker of the Michigan state house had already told McDaniel that the allegation was “fucking nuts.” 

Negotiating a Victory

Smith also further defined what Trump attorneys envisioned as the purpose of convening slates of false electors and using them to delay the count. 

In one example, attorney Ken Chesebro suggested to Rudy Giulani that Pence’s delay could be used as a means to “negotiate a solution to defeat Biden.” The idea would be to use the delay as a means of pressure, demonstrating that Congress was incapable of acting and thereby inviting the Supreme Court to step in and rule, theoretically, in Trump’s favor.

Nothing like this happened. But for Smith, it helps demonstrate that Trump went through a cascading series of plans for how to snatch victory from the jaws of an already-certain defeat.

It came up separately in Trump’s month-long campaign to pressure Pence into throwing out electoral votes for states that Trump lost. That, Smith said, took the form of tweets, cajoling, pressure, and threats, all of which created the impression among Trump supporters that Pence had the ability to change the result.

The Brooks Brothers Riot, Forever

Smith described the result of that failed pressure campaign as a “tinderbox” that ignited on January 6.  

But he takes a broader view of Trump and violence in the filing. 

To Smith, violence was always an option for Trump and those around him, something that could be used to force a victory if other options failed. 

At the outset, Smith recounts an event that took place during vote-counting at Detroit’s TCF Center. There, an unidentified person told a Trump campaign staffer that a batch of votes was leaning heavily in Biden’s favor, and that the count was accurate.

“[F]ind a reason it isnt,” the campaign staffer purportedly replied, adding: “give me options to file litigation” and “even if itbis [sic].”

It’s Trump’s stop the steal campaign in miniature. At first, the staffer allegedly considers mendacity and legal options as means to victory. But when that fails, the next move is violence.

The unidentified person then suggested to the staffer that there might be violence similar to the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot. The staffer allegedly replied: “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”

Smith characterized the Brooks Brothers riot itself as a “violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election.” It’s a telling aside. 

It also mirrors how Smith described Trump’s actions on January 6. 

During the speech on the Ellipse, Smith said, 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.”

Trump then sent his supporters, Smith said, to the Capitol in an effort to stop the electoral vote count. When a staffer told him that Mike Pence had managed to make it out of harm’s way, Trump allegedly replied: “So what?” 
 
























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                                Josh Kovensky                              

                                                                is an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, based in New York. He previously worked for the Kyiv Post in Ukraine, covering politics, business, and corruption there.                              



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deuce
says:


October 3, 2024


Me FRIST?!
(Now I’ll have to come up with something witty or constructive to post on an edit.)
Constructive:
I’ve been to Ripon Wisconsin many times when I lived and worked in Oshkosh about 25 minutes down the road.
A great site for Liz Cheney to make the altar-call for redemption and renewal.
She was totally sober in the non-alcohol sense and I think set a great tone of “Come-on-over-to-Kamala-Ye-Olde-Tyme-Republican-waverers” and help get us past this horrible moment in time.”







billymac
says:


October 3, 2024


It’s lovely to read the details, so artfully chosen.
I hear in the distance the lament of a frightened man:
“I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
Macbeth (III.4.136–8).







irasdad
says:


October 3, 2024



The unidentified person then suggested to the staffer that there might be violence similar to the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot. The staffer allegedly replied: “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”
Smith characterized the Brooks Brothers riot itself as a “violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election.” It’s a telling aside.

I will NEVER forgive Republicans – or those traitors on the Supreme Court – who wiped their smug hineys with the United States Constitution in 2000.
Hunter S Thompson:

“There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying — and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida.  It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense.   Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool.  The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory.  Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV.  The old man was the real tip-off.  The leer on his face was almost frightening.  It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth.  The sheep’s fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore’s.”








laparque
says:


October 3, 2024


Same playbook in operation for 24 but with better planning and the whole party on board. And it all started with Bush v Gore which was decided, remember, with militia violence and more Timothy McVeighs as the implicit threat.  The fascism aint new and isnt only Trump, and we’re still sleepwalking in denial.







billymac
says:


October 3, 2024


Yes! Yes! Yes!





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The most important part of Smith's filing is shutting down the notion that Trump could have been acting in his official capacity as president by pointing out the fact that the president has no official hand in that aspect of the electoral process... And that whole ass part about Trump's deployment of **private** lawyers to facilitate his actions. 

The filing really should be detrimental to any claims of immunity and once you get past that and realize Trump's entire defense isn't that he didn't do it, rather that he did do it but it's cool because he's allowed to; this should be an easy case for the prosecution.