“THIS ILLEGAL ACTION TAKEN BY THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, INCLUDING THEIR RAID ON MAR-A-LAGO FOR A CASE THAT WAS DISMISSED, WILL END JUST LIKE ALL OF THE OTHERS - WITH COMPLETE VICTORY FOR ‘PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.’ MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” said former President Donald Trump in a Truth Social post at 5:10 p.m. Wednesday.
Around that time, news was breaking about an unsealed brief filed by special counsel Jack Smith in the criminal case against Trump regarding the 2020 election. It’s been a while since news broke about the case, so here’s some background.
In 2020, Trump lost the election to President Joe Biden. However, he had already been making unfounded claims about election fraud, and he continued to make these claims after the election. On Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress was meant to certify votes for Biden, rioters – some brandishing Trump merch – stormed the Capitol and tried to prevent that certification. That day, Trump also held a rally in Washington D.C. where he publicly continued to make claims about election fraud.
He’s continued to make those claims this year, and this summer the Associated Press fact-checked the former president’s claims that the insurrection was a “small” gathering. The AP clarified that thousands of people stormed the Capitol that day.
Last August, Smith announced an indictment was unsealed charging Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. That indictment described the deadly riot as an event “fueled by lies” and it accused Trump of lying in a way that targeted a “bedrock function of the U.S. government.”
Flash forward to this summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a ruling about presidential immunity that could have a major impact on the case. The conservative leaning court (including three justices appointed by Trump himself) ruled that he may be able to claim immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken while in the White House.
Smith’s new brief argues that, in the case of the Jan. 6 riot, Trump can’t claim this immunity.
“The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct. Not so,” Smith wrote. “Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one.”
Throughout the 165-page document, Smith outlines Trump’s alleged criminal acts.
The New York Times picked out some of the new revelations included in the document. These include a allegation that, when told by an aide that Vice President Mike Pence was in peril as the rioting on Capitol Hill escalated on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump replied, “So what?”
Rioters at the Capitol fashioned a noose and shouted “Hang Mike Pence,” since the then-VP would not prevent the certification of votes for Biden.
According to the NYT, Trump also told one of his lawyers “the details don’t matter,” when he was warned that his claims about election fraud would not hold up in court. Another anecdote highlighted by The Times is from an Oval Office assistant who heard him say: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington made the brief public.
“It was designed to help Judge Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, to determine how much of the indictment can survive the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in July granting Mr. Trump a broad form of immunity against prosecution for many official acts while in office,” said The Times.
During the vice-presidential candidates’ debate Tuesday, Trump’s running mate – Sen. JD Vance of Ohio – declined to say that Trump had lost the 2020 election, the outlet noted. It was a rather reserved debate, and polls showed that most watchers were nearly split about who won, with Vance performing slightly better (42%) than the Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (41%).
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung offered a statement about the unsealed brief Wednesday.
“This entire case is a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely,” Cheung said, according to ABC News.
Trump seemed to echo this sentiment in other Truth Social posts Wednesday. In one, he mentioned claims about National Guard troops that appear to have been fact-checked by the AP and the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
“The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” said Trump in another post. “Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power.”
In another, he claimed that the release was tied to Vance’s performance during the debate.
“Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris,” said Trump. “The DOJ pushed out this latest ‘hit job’ today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate,”
“I DID NOTHING WRONG, THEY DID! THE CASE IS A SCAM, JUST LIKE ALL OF THE OTHERS, INCLUDING THE DOCUMENTS CASE, WHICH WAS DISMISSED!,” Trump followed up in an all-caps posts directed at the U.S. Department of Justice. In another, he added: “I didn’t rig the 2020 Election, they did!”
There’s only about a month to go before the next election. While polling did indicate that Vance was considered the debate winner, Harris is still actually in the lead Wednesday, according to polling aggregates from FiveThirtyEight. Forecasts from The Center for Politics, The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ and The Virtual Tout also show Harris in the lead.