Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ to overturn 2020 result

Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” in an effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, prosecutors allege in a new court filing that argues the former president is not immune from prosecution.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor appointed to lead the election interference case against Trump, submitted the filing which was unsealed on Wednesday.

It challenges Trump’s claim that he is protected by a landmark Supreme Court ruling in July that gives broad immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office.

In the filing, prosecutors allege Trump was not always acting in an official capacity and instead engaged in a “private criminal effort” to overturn the 2020 results.

The 165-page document is an effort by prosecutors to advance the criminal case against Trump following the Supreme Court ruling.

“Big win for our constitution and democracy,” Trump said at the time of the ruling, which was a major victory for the Republican candidate for president.

It prompted prosecutors to narrow the scope of their indictment. That is because the ruling did not apply immunity to unofficial acts, leading prosecutors to argue that while Trump may still have been in office some of his alleged efforts to overturn the election were related to his campaign and his life as a private citizen.

The court should “determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as he would any other citizen,” Mr Smith wrote in the new filing.

The case has been frequently delayed since charges were filed by the Department of Justice more than a year ago accusing Trump, who denies wrongdoing, of seeking to illegally block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in January 2021.

Trump’s lawyers fought to keep the latest filing sealed, and campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called it “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, Trump called it a “hit job” and said it “should not have been released right before the election”.

He accused prosecutors of “egregious” misconduct.

The filing offers new evidence and presents the clearest view yet of how prosecutors would seek to present their case against Trump at trial.

It alleges that he always planned to declare victory no matter the result, and laid the groundwork for this long before election day. It also accuses him of knowingly spreading false claims about the vote that he himself deemed “crazy”.

Mr Smith also provides several new details about the Trump campaign’s alleged role in sowing chaos in battleground states, where a large number of mail-in ballots were being counted in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, Michigan, when a large batch of ballots seemed to be in favour of Biden, a Trump campaign operative allegedly told his colleague to “find a reason” that something was wrong with the ballots to give him “options to file litigation”.

The filing also claims that Trump and his allies, including lawyer Rudy Giuliani, sought to “exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” on 6 January 2021 to delay the election certification. They allegedly did this by calling senators and leaving voicemails that asked them to object to the state electors.

Trump said on Wednesday that the case would end with his “complete victory”. A trial has not been set, but any potential date will almost certainly be after the 5 November election