Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ to overturn 2020 election, prosecutors say

By Ato-Kwamena Dadzie Last updated Oct 7, 2024

Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” while trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat, and should not escape charges, prosecutors say.

CBS News New York’s Tim McNicholas has more on the unsealed court documents in the special counsel’s investigation into former President Trump’s alleged efforts to cling to power after the 2020 election.

A new court filing challenges Trump’s claim that he should avoid a trial thanks to a recent landmark US Supreme Court ruling. This said American presidents should be immune from prosecution when acting in an “official” capacity.

Trump was president when the alleged offences were committed – but prosecutors say he was acting in a “private” capacity, not an official one.

In response, Trump has repeated false claims that the 2020 vote was “rigged” and suggested the timing of the filing’s release was designed to hurt his 2024 campaign.

In an interview with NewsNation, he also criticised Special Counsel Jack Smith, the lead prosecutor in the election interference probe who submitted the filing.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan released the document – filed by Mr Smith last week – with redactions on Wednesday.

This is one of four criminal cases Trump has faced since being voted out in 2020 – another of which led to a historic conviction in New York.

He is accused of seeking to illegally block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, but denies wrongdoing.

The new 165-page document presents the clearest view yet of how Mr Smith’s team would pursue their case, having tweaked the wording of their charges after the Supreme Court’s intervention.

It gives details of Trump’s alleged scheme, including his actions when his supporters rioted at the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021. It also outlines the efforts of Mike Pence, the vice-president at the time, to talk him down.

The issue remains prominent in US politics almost four years later, ahead of the 2024 election in November, which will be contested by Trump and Kamala Harris.

It came up in Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, during which JD Vance refused to answer whether Trump, his running mate for 2024, lost in 2020.

The court filing may represent Mr Smith’s last chance to set out his case against Trump.

The case has been frequently delayed since charges were filed by the Department of Justice (DoJ) more than a year ago. Trump will not face trial before November’s election – and he may seek to have the case dropped if he wins.

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

In the newly-released document, Mr Smith and his team try to navigate the summer Supreme Court ruling – which dented their case – by narrowing their scope.

The Supreme Court ruling did not apply immunity to unofficial acts. The prosecutors argue that although Trump was still in office when attempting to overturn the 2020 vote, his attempts related to his campaign and his life as a private citizen. They call it a “private criminal effort”.

The court should therefore “determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as he would any other citizen,” the filing says.

The filing lays out several instances in which Pence, expressed doubt about his boss’s voter fraud claims and tried to persuade him to accept he lost the election.

In the court document, prosecutors say Trump was not upset when he learned his vice-president had been rushed to a secure location as rioters stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. “So what?” he allegedly said, when informed of the scenes.

Pence would later go public about his falling out with Trump in the wake of the storming of Congress, when some rioters shouted “hang Mike Pence” because the vice-president refused to obstruct the certification of election results.

The filing also alleges that Trump 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 date has not been set.

Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ to overturn 2020 election, prosecutors say

More on the US election