Damning evidence against Trump in new motion

WASHINGTON: A new 165-page motion unsealed on Wednesday presents the most thorough and detailed set of evidence yet against Former President Donald Trump for his insurrection crimes in 2020.

The motion comes as a result of a probe by Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Trump’s attempts to undermine the results of the 2020 US presidential election. And it presents the most damning evidence yet which could have major implications for the interference case against the presidential nominee.

A PRIVATE SCHEME

Smith contends that Trump’s “scheme was fundamentally a private one,” and urges the court to “determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.”

In August of last year, Trump was hit with a slew of charges from Smith and his team of prosecutors, including but not limited to conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy against rights.

Smith’s case revolved around an investigation surrounding the January 6 riots, alleging that the dissemination of false information regarding voter fraud induced a mob of Trump supporters to storm the capital, disrupting the peaceful transfer of power.

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With a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court sided with Trump, arguing that presidents have immunity in all ‘official acts’ taken while in office. Wednesday’s motion begs to differ.

The basis of the argument is simple – Trump’s attempts to disrupt the collection and counting of votes through “fraud and deceit,” are completely unrelated to the role of President.  

CONSPIRACIES

Three conspiracies are mentioned in relation to Trump’s attempted disruption – “interference with the federal governments functions by which the nation collects and counts election results,” “a conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding in which congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election,” and “conspiracy against the rights of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted.”

The motion argues that all of the aforementioned crimes were committed in Trump’s capacity as a candidate and that they were set out well before the election even took place.

Before the 2020 election, Trump’s advisors informed him that the race would be a close and that initial returns on election night would be misleading. The large volume of mail in ballots, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic, would create the possibility for the former President to take an early lead as his supporters favoured in person voting.

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Trump was informed that once the mail-in ballots would be counted, Biden was likely to take the lead. To deal with such an outcome, Trump told his advisors that he would declare victory before all the ballots were counted.

Further evidence of such a plan can be seen in Trump’s own interviews which are outlined by the document, and feature the formation of his plan as he disputes the validity of mail-in ballots. “There is no way you can go through a mail-in vote without massive cheating,” said the nominee in an interview on August 2, 2020.

At 2:20 AM on November 4, 2020 – as the count of votes continued to become closer – Trump claimed fraud, stating “this is an embarrassment to our country” and that “frankly, we did win this election.”

Trump officials then targeted polling centres, such as in Detroit where the count was looking favourable for Biden. A Trump campaign employee was told by a colleague at the centre that the results were “right”, to which he responded, “find a reason it isn’t.”

KNOWINGLY SPREADING FALSE INFORMATION

Smith then seeks to prove that Trump knew his claims of a rigged election were false, as was told to him by an attorney who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial. Said attorney then became an assistant to the president in August 2020.

The document states that the assistant repeatedly told Trump that any legal challenges to the election would fail, specifically telling the then president that the campaign had hired external experts to look into the ‘rigged election’, yet no evidence supporting his fraud claims was unearthed.

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Former Vice President Mike Pence recounted what he was told in a conversation on November 4, stating that “the campaign was going to fight, was going to go to court and make challenges.”

Trump’s misinformation also lacked consistency, another factor pointing to them knowingly spreading false allegations. One instance the document details has to do with non-citizen votes in Arizona, with the Trump campaign alleging that 36,000 non-citizens voted in the state. The figure continued to change, fluctuating between the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands.

Fear-mongering in regards to the supposed rigged election resulted in the speech Trump delivered on January 6 2021, ahead of the proceeding which would see Congress certify Biden’s win.

Lies were repeated and then lives were lost in the ensuing raid on the capital.