U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has unsealed 165 pages of evidence filed against former President Donald Trump in his election fraud case. It is the first time the public gets an in-depth look at Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal case against the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights in connection with an alleged pressure campaign on state officials to reverse the 2020 election results.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied all charges against him. The former president has repeatedly said he is the victim of a political witch hunt. He has accused Smith of attempting to interfere in the 2024 presidential election by prosecuting him.
Here are the five biggest revelations from the filing:
‘Make Them Riot’: Trump Staffer Encourages Riot In Detroit
On November 4, 2020, when vote tallies were not going Trump’s way in Detroit, a campaign staffer texted a Trump operative to get a riot going among his supporters outside the counting center.
“Make them riot” he allegedly texted, and “Do it!!!!”
The filing states the texts from the campaign staffer were in response to the Trump operative in Detroit warning that the situation was reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers riot in Florida in 2000. Republican staffers in Miami-Dade County at the time disrupted a recount of votes in the close presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
After one batch of votes came in that favored Biden, the same staffer allegedly texted the Trump operative seeking “options to file litigation”, even if the legal objections were “itbis”, a seemingly corrupted version of “B.S.”, a common abbreviation of the expletive “b*******”.
Prosecutors allege that, in Philadelphia, Trump operatives tried to use similar tactics and create confrontations at polling centers and then “falsely claim that his election observers were being denied proper access” so they could tell his supporters that the count centers were engaged in fraud.
Newsweek emailed the Trump campaign team for comment on Thursday.
‘So What?’: ‘Incensed’ Trump Didn’t Care As Protesters Hunted Mike Pence On January 6
The document states that Trump called then-Vice President Mike Pence on the morning of January 6, 2021, pleading with him not to certify the election for Joe Biden later that day. Pence refused to do so and Trump was “incensed,” the filing states.
When rioters later broke into the Capitol building chanting threats about Pence, Trump wrote on Twitter that his vice president “didn’t have the courage” to refuse to certify the election. He attacked “Pence for refusing the defendant’s entreaties to join the conspiracy and help overturn the results of the election,” prosecutors allege in the document.
Special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, DC, on August 1, 2023 and former US President Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 8, 2022. Smith’s dossier accusing Trump of election fraud has been released by a Washington, D.C judge.
Saul Loeb/Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images
The tweet told Trump’s “angry supporters that Pence had let him—and them—down,” it states.
The prosecution’s filing notes that one rioter used a bullhorn to read out Trump’s tweet to his fellow rioters.
A minute after Trump posted the tweet, the Secret Service and Capitol police took the vice president to a secure location inside the Capitol building.
A White House aide ran to Trump to tell the then-president that he had just received a phone call informing him that Pence had been taken to a secure location “in hopes that (Trump) would take action to ensure Pence’s safety.”
Trump replied: “So what?” and didn’t appear concerned for Pence’s safety as the rioters walked around the Capitol building looking for the vice president.
‘F****** Nuts’: RNC Chairwoman Tells Trump His Election Fraud Report Is Worthless
In mid-December 2020, Trump spoke with Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and “asked her to publicize and promote a private report that had been released on December 13 that purported to identify flaws” in the use of voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan.
She refused, telling Trump that she had already discussed the report with Michigan’s Speaker of the House, “who had told her the report was inaccurate.”
McDaniel conveyed to Trump the Michigan speaker’s “exact assessment: the report was f******* nuts,” the filing states.
Regardless, Trump continued to claim that the election in Michigan and other states had been rigged in Biden’s favor, the document notes.
‘It Doesn’t Matter if You Won Or Lost’: Trump’s Pep Talk to Family
Trump was traveling with his family on the presidential helicopter Marine One with First Lady Melania, his daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, after the election. Also on board was an unnamed White House official who was assistant to the president and the director of Oval Office operations.
The White House official is willing to testify that Trump told his family: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”
The White House official “witnessed an unprompted comment that the defendant made to his family members in which the defendant suggested that he would fight to remain in power regardless of whether he had won the election,” the prosecution document states.
The document goes to great lengths to paint the conversation as a private one. That is because the entire case had to be rewritten to comply with the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling on presidential immunity, which gave Trump broad protection from prosecution for official acts.
The document alleges that the conversation was “plainly private,” even though Ivanka Trump and Kushner were White House advisors at the time.
“The defendant made the comment to his family members, who campaigned on his behalf and served as private advisors (in addition to any official role they may have played),” the document states.
‘F*** His Lawyer’: Steve Bannon Rants As Mike Pence’s Attorney Seeks To Restore Order
After the election, Trump and his allies tried multiple times to get Pence on board with their unfounded claims of voter fraud. Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, was also “totally against us”, one Trump operative said.
On hearing this, former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon said, “F*** his lawyer”, the document states.
Bannon later refused to cooperate with the January 6 House select committee investigating attempts to overturn Biden’s election win. Bannon is currently serving a four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress.
See the full filing below:
