LIVE UPDATES
New evidence has emerged against former US President Donald Trump, indicting him of overturning the 2020 elections before he lost to cling to power.
The evidence from the prosecutor's desk explained that, Trump pushed false claims of voter fraud and "resorted to crimes" in his failed bid to cling to power.
This was contained in a court filing revealing the landmark of criminal case against the former president.
The filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team offered the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intended to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial.
Although months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the filing cited previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who, while losing his grip on the White House, “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”
“So what?” the filing quoted Trump as telling an aide after being advised that his vice president, Mike Pence, had been rushed to a secure location after a crowd of violent Trump supporters stormed the U.S Capitol on January 6, 2021, to try to prevent the counting of electoral votes.
"The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing stated.
The brief was made public over the Trump legal team’s objections in the final month of a closely contested presidential race in which Democrats had sought to make Trump’s refusal to accept the election results four years ago central to their claims that he was unfit for office.
The issue flared as recently as Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate when Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, lamented the violence at the Capitol while a Republican opponent, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, refused to directly answer when asked whether Trump had lost the 2020 race.
The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they took in office, a decision that narrowed the scope of the prosecution and eliminated the possibility of a trial before next month’s election.
The purpose of the brief is to persuade U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offences charged in the indictment were undertaken in Trump’s private, rather than presidential capacity and could therefore remain part of the case as it moves forward.
Chutkan permitted a redacted version to be made public, even though Trump’s lawyers argued that it was unfair to unseal it so close to the election.
Though the prospects of a trial are uncertain, particularly if Trump wins the presidency and a new attorney general seeks the dismissal of the case, the brief nonetheless functions as a roadmap for the testimony and evidence prosecutors would elicit before a jury.
It is now up to Chutkan to decide which of Trump’s acts are official conduct for which Trump is immune from prosecution and which are, in the words of Smith’s team, “private crimes” on which the case can proceed.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and Democrats were “hell-bent on weaponising the Justice Department.”
Trump, in a separate post on his Truth Social platform, said the case would end with his “complete victory.”
Revealing further, Immediately after the election, prosecutors said, "his advisers sought to sow chaos in the counting of votes. In one instance, a campaign employee described as a Trump co-conspirator was told that results favouring Democrat Joe Biden at a Michigan polling centre appeared accurate."
The person is alleged to have replied, “find a reason it isn't” and “give me options to file litigation.”
Prosecutors also alleged that Trump advanced claims of fraud despite knowing they were false, recounting how he conceded to others that allegations of election irregularities made by attorney Sidney Powell were “crazy” and referenced the science fiction series “Star Trek.”
Even so, days later, he promoted on Twitter a lawsuit she was about to file.
But, prosecutors wrote, Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states including those in his own party who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false.”
Prosecutors also argued Trump used his Twitter account to spread false claims of election fraud, attacking “those speaking the truth” about his loss and exhorting his supporters to travel to Washington for the January 6, 2021 certification.
