Special Counsel Jack Smith won’t get a chance to bring his best criminal case against Donald Trump to trial before the 2024 election — and if Trump wins, Smith may never get that chance. But on Wednesday, the public got the most complete look at the evidence Smith has collected to try to prove that the former president orchestrated criminal conspiracies as he tried to reverse his loss four years ago.
In a 165-page legal brief unsealed by a federal judge (albeit with some redactions), the special counsel detailed evidence he would use at Trump’s trial if the case ever got that far. Smith also presented his arguments for why Trump is not immune from the charges, despite the Supreme Court’s summer ruling that granted presidents broad immunity from official acts.
Much of Smith’s letter focused on Trump’s state of mind in the weeks leading up to the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Smith described a slew of conversations that showed the then-president knew his claims of election fraud were false. And Smith presented evidence that Trump’s sole purpose was to stay in power — and not, as he and his lawyers have argued, to exercise legitimate authority over election integrity.
Here’s POLITICO’s look at the most significant and striking details in Smith’s assignment.
Alone with his phone
On January 6 at 2:24 p.m., as Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, Trump took to Twitter to condemn Vice President Mike Pence. He said Pence lacked “courage” because Pence had resisted pressure from Trump to intervene in the certification of the Electoral College.
According to Smith’s prosecutors, Trump was alone in the White House dining room when he sent that tweet. Trump’s aides left him there after failing to convince him to call on his supporters to leave the Capitol.
“The defendant personally posted the tweet… at a time when he already understood that the Capitol had been breached,” prosecutors wrote.
Trump asked, “And then?”
The tweet criticizing Pence coincided with one of the riot’s most dangerous moments: the precise moment Pence was evacuated from his Senate office to a loading dock beneath the Capitol. Rioters had come within 40 feet of where he was sheltering just before this moment.
When Trump was informed of Pence’s evacuation by an aide, prosecutors say Trump responded: “So what?”
Trump’s first call for calm — which advisers deemed insufficient — came 14 minutes later: “Please support our police and law enforcement at the Capitol. They are truly on the side of our country. Stay calm!”
The results are not taken into account
According to prosecutors, at some point during Trump’s attempt to overturn the results, a Trump White House official heard Trump tell his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, “It doesn’t matter whether you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell. The comment was allegedly made on Marine One.
Coming up with statistics
Prosecutors said they would prove at trial that Trump and his allies often made up statistics about voter fraud “from scratch.” For example, Trump and allies claimed that 36,000 noncitizens had cast ballots in Arizona, changing the figure five days later to “a few hundred thousand” and eventually reducing it to “bare minimum… 40 or 50,000,” and then to 32,000 and a backup. to the original number of 36,000.
Broken promises of evidence
A week after Election Day in 2020, Trump told then-Gov. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) that he was “packaging” fraud evidence to share with him, prosecutors wrote. But Trump never provided it. Ducey told Trump that Arizona was all but lost, compared to being in “the ninth inning, two outs and [the defendant] was several runs behind,” Smith’s letter stated.
Mocking Sidney Powell
After a Fox News host called Trump-affiliated attorney Sidney Powell for making outlandish claims about Dominion voting machines, Trump called her on speakerphone. During the Nov. 20, 2020, call, Trump lowered his line and mocked her to two aides, calling her claims about the election “crazy” and referencing Star Trek, prosecutors allege. On another occasion he called Powell “unhinged.”
Although not referenced in Smith’s new dossier or his indictment, Trump later considered appointing Powell as special counsel to investigate election fraud, and he considered a proposal she made to seize voting machines from swing states for a forensic inspection .
Trump’s January 5 call to Steve Bannon
Prosecutors, who had more access to phone records and emails than the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6, allege that Trump spoke by phone with ally Steve Bannon on Jan. 5, less than two hours before Bannon made a prescient and provocative prediction about his war. Room podcast that “all hell is going to break loose” on January 6.
A taste of forensic evidence
Prosecutors plan to have an FBI computer forensics investigator testify about Trump’s phone use on January 6. They say that will reveal what news and social media apps he had on his phone and that Trump was on Twitter most of the day. Prosecutors also plan to show at trial what Fox News broadcast at specific times during the day, as Trump had it on in the dining room watching coverage of the riot.
‘Let them rise up’
Well before January 6, an unidentified Trump campaign official spoke enthusiastically about the potential for a riot in Michigan. The employee, described by prosecutors as a co-conspirator, allegedly tried to “create chaos” at a polling place in Detroit when it became clear that a set of election results favoring Biden were legitimate. “Find a reason why this isn’t the case,” the alleged co-conspirator told a colleague, prosecutors wrote. When the colleague said an outbreak of violence was imminent, the campaign worker responded: “Root them” and “Do it!!!”
Rudy’s rise
Trump sidelined his campaign lawyers on November 13, 2020, with Bannon informing another Trump campaign adviser – and alleged co-conspirator – that Trump had replaced them in the pecking order with Rudy Giuliani. Bannon said he told Trump that without Giuliani in charge, “this thing is over.” “Trump is down to the wire,” Bannon added, prosecutors said.
Rudy’s follies
Counting on Giuliani did not work out so well. Smith’s letter contains yet another example of Giuliani’s prolific track record on butt-dialing and clumsy cell phone use. Prosecutors say he tried to send a proposed resolution to Michigan lawmakers declaring the election was disputed — but sent it to the wrong number.
