Donald Trump vs. the American People

A private citizen

No contest

Last week, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith submitted a 165-page filing last week under seal to Judge Tanya Chutkan. He requested that the filing be made public. Judge Chutkan gave Donald Trump and his legal team until Tuesday, Oct 1 to respond to the request and provide redactions. The Jack Smith’s document, written in part to take into account the ruling on presidential immunity handed down earlier this year by the corrupt illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court was made public yesterday. And it is, as attorney Andrew Weissman said, devastating.

Smith makes the case that in the events leading up to January 6, Donald acted as a private citizen and a private candidate when he planned and incited the insurrection. His conduct, therefore, is not protected by the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

In the factual proffer, Smith writes:

When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (the “targeted states”). His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts; manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states; attempting to enlist Vice President Michael R. Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to obstruct Congress’s certification of the election by using the defendant’s fraudulent electoral votes; and when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification. The throughline of these efforts was deceit: the defendant’s and co-conspirators’ knowingly false claims of election fraud.

They used these lies in furtherance of three conspiracies: 1) a conspiracy to interfere with the federal government function by which the nation collects and counts election results, which is set forth in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act (ECA); 2) a conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding in which Congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election, and 3) a conspiracy against the rights of Americans to vote and have their votes counted.

The scheme started at least three days before the election. P [private person] 1, as identified in the filing, told some of Donald’s supporters: “And what Trump’s going to do is just declare victory, right? He’s going to declare victory. That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner.”

Which is exactly what Donald did. Before the election results were even announced, he claimed without any proof that the election had been fraudulent. “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election.”

Meanwhile, according to Smith, Donald’s

private operatives sought to create chaos, rather than seek clarity, at polling places where states were continuing to tabulate votes. On Nov 4 a campaign employee, agent, and co-conspirator of the defendant, Donald, tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at a center in Detroit looked unfavorable to Donald. When the co-conspirator was told that a batch of votes was going heavily in Biden’s favor, he said ‘find a reason it isn’t. give me options to file litigation, even it’s bs.’

When a colleague suggested there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers riot which occurred in a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, Donald’s co-conspirator said, ‘Make them riot. Do it.’”

Almost immediately after Biden was declared the winner on November 7, Donald and his legal team began filing lawsuits contesting the election results. In the end there would be almost 60 of them. On November 23, Donald told Mike Pence that one of his personal attorneys believed the lawsuits would not be successful.

On December 19, three weeks after he knew with almost complete certainty that he’d lost, Donald sent this now-infamous text:

Jack Smith then details the important role played by Donald’s political rallies in the days and weeks leading up to January 6^th which Donald used, in part, to perpetuate false claims about his having won the election. We now know from official records that even Donald’s own White House considered these rallies private events. Regarding the “Victory Rally” in Georgia, Smith writes the following:

The defendant was the only Executive Branch participant in the event—other attendees were federal and state officials. The trip binder included a Hatch Act disclaimer stating that ‘employees of the Federal Government may not use their official title or position when participating in a political event.’ The use of the phrase ‘Victory Rally’ is significant. ‘Victory’ necessitates one political candidate or party defeating another, and rallies are the kinds of events that candidates hold to excite their supporters and garner votes.

Moreover, the defendant’s Campaign sent out numerous fundraising emails before, during, and after the speech, confirming the event’s private nature.

In a section called “None of the Allegations or Evidence Is Protected by Presidential Immunity,” Smith writes:

“At its core, the defendant’s scheme was a private one. He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”

Because Donald Trump has been so effectively able to game the legal system in his favor, there is no way that this case is going to trial before the election. Because of the corrupt illegitimate super majority of the Supreme Court, there’s a real possibility this case will never go to trial at all.

It was, therefore, crucially important that Judge Chutkan and Jack Smith got this information in front of the electorate before November 5. We deserve to know all of the damning details about the depths of Donald Trump’s depravity. We need to know that the presidential candidate the Republican Party nominated, and the traitor they continue to support almost unequivocally, engaged in a conspiracy against the American people.