WASHINGTON — Donald Trump “laid the groundwork for his crimes” well before Election Day in 2020. He said “the details don’t matter” when told his election fraud claims would fail in court. And his response to learning that then-Vice President Mike Pence had been taken to a secure location as rioters stormed the Capitol was: “So what?”
That’s according to a 165-page court filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team that paints a portrait of a president so desperate to cling to power that he “resorted to crimes” after losing the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.
The filing unsealed Wednesday provides a glimpse into the evidence and testimony prosecutors plan to present if the case accusing Trump of an illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election ever reaches trial.
The Republican presidential nominee has maintained that he did nothing illegal and has characterized the case as an attempt to hurt his bid to reclaim the White House in November. Trump’s lawyers who have pushed to dismiss the case will now get a chance to respond in court to prosecutors’ claims.
Here are some of the key passages from the filing:
Trump laid the groundwork for his scheme early, prosecutors say: Prosecutors allege Trump started laying the foundation for his illegal scheme well before Election Day, refusing to say in the months leading up to it whether he would accept the results and suggesting he could lose only if there were fraud.
Three days before the election, a Trump political adviser told a group of supporters that the then-president was “going to declare himself the winner” no matter the outcome,” according to prosecutors.
“That doesn’t mean he’s the winner; he’s just going to say he’s the winner,” the adviser said.
Trump “did exactly that,” prosecutors said. Then, in the days following the election, his allies “sought to create chaos” at polling places where votes were still being counted, Smith’s team alleges.
‘The details don’t matter,’ Trump told an adviser: Prosecutors are trying to show that Trump knew his election fraud claims were bogus because many in his circle told him that there was no fraud and that he actually had lost the election. Prosecutors say Trump disregarded those assurances just like he disregarded “dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims.”
In one key moment detailed in the filing, a lawyer who represented Trump during his first impeachment trial told Trump that his election fraud claims wouldn’t survive in court. Trump responded: “The details don’t matter,” according to prosecutors.
Trump’s relentless pressure on Pence: One of the most illuminating sections of the filing details the relentless pressure campaign that Trump and his allies enlisted against Pence, beginning well before Election Day and running up to the final minutes of the Jan. 6, 2021, certification of President Joe Biden’s win.
Most of the details of the former president’s attempts to get his running mate to reject Biden’s electoral votes have been well documented, but Smith’s latest brief gives an even more granular look at the breakdown between the two men. Prosecutors say one sought desperately to cling to power and the other fought to maintain his fidelity to the Constitution.
When news organizations, including The Associated Press, called the election for Biden on Nov. 7, Pence saw it as an opportunity to remind Trump that he “took a dying political party and gave it a new lease on life,” prosecutors wrote. A few days later, when Trump and his allies were still strategizing ways to overcome the defeat, Pence noted that the next presidential election in 2024 was “not so far off.”
When Pence refused on Dec. 28 to support the various legal cases being pursued by Trump and his close allies in Congress, the filing states, Trump told his vice president that “hundreds of thousands” of people “are gonna hate your guts” and “people are gonna think you’re stupid.” He added, “You’re too honest.”
This went on for days, until the two men met in person one last time before Jan. 6. The meeting in the Oval Office on the eve of the certification is seen by prosecutors as one of Trump’s last efforts to encourage Pence privately to keep him in power, telling him once again that he had “the power to decertify” the results. “When Pence was unmoved, the defendant threatened to criticize him publicly,” the filing states. “I’m gonna have to say you did a great disservice,” Trump said.
Pence relayed this comment to a member of his team who saw it as a direct threat “to the point that he alerted Pence’s Secret Service detail.”
