Bombshell report released by Judge Chutkan exposes more Trump crimes – People's World

New evidence in special counsel Jack Smith's latest, now released file includes statements from Trump's closest associates that he began the process that culminated in the attempted coup at the Capitol long before he actually knew he had lost the election. The filing also explains how Trump knowingly committed criminal acts to carry out the plan. | Jose Luis Magana/AP

Donald Trump began his attempt to overthrow the US Constitution and the 2020 election long before he actually lost that election by making what he knew were false statements about voter fraud. To make matters worse, he actually committed criminal acts in what was ultimately a failed attempt to maintain his power beyond the legal end of his presidential term.

The startling finding was made in a report published yesterday by Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over one of the many criminal cases against him. She unsealed the information she received from special prosecutor Jack Smith, a file that contained never-before-heard evidence in the historic case against the ex-president.

The new evidence in the Smith file explained how Trump made false claims of election fraud and how he “resorted to crime” in his illegal attempt to stay in power.

Smith's team's filings provide the most comprehensive look at what his team plans to prove when the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election goes to trial. It goes far beyond what was in the original indictment and what was uncovered two years ago by the special congressional committee on January 6th.

Smith's latest filing points to previously unknown information revealed by Trump's closest aides that reveals how an “increasingly desperate” president, as he lost power, “used deception to undermine literally every single phase of the electoral process in the United States.” destroy”.

“So what?” In the released document, Trump is quoted as telling this to a top aide after he told him that Vice President Mike Pence had been moved to a safe location because of a crowd of rampaging Trump supporters who were massacred on January 6, 2021 stormed the US Capitol, calling for him to be hanged for failing to prevent the counting of electoral votes.

This part of the file is particularly significant because it comes just a day after JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, admitted to the entire nation in a televised debate that he would have committed unconstitutional acts, unlike Pence, if Trump had wished he had been in the Pence position. It was Vance's willingness to break the law for Trump, Democratic candidate Tim Walz said that evening, which explains why Vance, not Pence, was the person he (Walz) was debating that evening and why voters chose both Vance and Pence should also reject Trump.

“The details don't matter,” Trump said when an adviser told him that an attorney who took on his legal challenges would not be able to prove the false allegations in court, Smith's filing says .

Trump is angry that the file was released after his lawyers worked overtime to prevent it. He is using his latest excuse to dwell on alleged injustices against him rather than discussing many of the issues that matter to voters in the upcoming election.

Trump still refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election, and Democrats, including Walz in the recent debate, are making it an important part of their campaign to show that it is unfair to oust the former president to return to the White House. Vance, when asked by Walz during the debate, also refused to admit that Trump lost the election. This refusal was in addition to his refusal to answer a variety of questions from the moderators and his outright lies about the positions he took. This included the lie that he never supported a national ban on abortion rights.

Smith's latest filing was filed under seal after a Supreme Court ruling granted former presidents broad immunity for acts they commit while in office. This decision sought to limit the scope of prosecution and eliminate the possibility of a trial before next month's election.

In the filing, Smith shows U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the crimes charged in the indictment were committed in Trump's private capacity, not in a presidential capacity, and therefore can remain part of the trial moving forward.

Whether the matter ever goes to trial depends on whether Trump wins the presidency. A sycophant he appoints as attorney general could seek dismissal of the case, or Trump could try to pardon himself.

It is now up to Chutkan to decide which of Trump's actions are official conduct for which Trump is immune from prosecution, and which are, as Smith's team put it, “private crimes” against which the case can proceed.

“Although defendant was the sitting president during the charged conspiracies, his plan was essentially a private one,” Smith wrote, adding, “When defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crime to remain in office.”

Immediately after the election, prosecutors say, Trump agents tried to cause confusion in the counting of ballots. In one case, a Trump aide was told that results at a polling place in Michigan that favored Joe Biden were correct. The Trump agent said, “Find a reason why that’s not the case,” because “I want to file a lawsuit against the Biden campaign.”

The filing also shows how Trump claimed fraud even though he knew it wasn't fraud. The filing shows that he actually admitted to his aides that his lawyer Sidney Powell's allegations were “crazy.” Nevertheless, he spread these allegations on Twitter.

The filing shows how Trump could have cared less about the veracity of his claims of alleged fraud. He told his wife, Melania, and his daughter and son-in-law on Marine One that “it doesn't matter whether you won or lost the election,” but that he made the claims anyway.

The filing also contains details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch on November 12, 2020, at which Pence reiterated “a face-saving option” for Trump and told him: “Don't concede, but acknowledge the process.” .”

At another luncheon days later, Pence called on Trump to accept the election results and run again in 2024.

“I don’t know, 2024 is so far away,” Trump told him, the filing says.

According to the Smith files, Trump began implementing congressional involvement in his planned coup in early December 2020. “For the first time he mentioned to Pence the possibility of challenging the election results in the House of Representatives,” it said, citing a phone call.

But, prosecutors wrote, Trump “disrespected” “Pence” in the same way he “disrespected” dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected the legal claims of him and his allies, and that he “disrespected” officials in the states under attack – including those of his own party – publicly stated that he had lost and that his specific allegations of fraud were false.”

Of the more than 1,200 tweets Trump sent in the weeks cited in the indictment, the vast majority were about the 2020 election, prosecutors said, including those that falsely claimed that Pence could reject voters despite being the vice president Trump said he had no such power.

The Smith file is about how Trump's flood of lies reached its climax in his speech at Elipse on January 6, 2021. It shows how Trump “used these lies to motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march” to the Capitol and disrupt the certification process. “His personal despair was at its peak that morning,” as he was “just hours away from the certification process that spelled the end,” Smith wrote.

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