Jack Smith’s Brief Puts Jan. 6th Back in the Headlines. Good.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
YESTERDAY AFTERNOON, the sun peeked out from behind the dim gray clouds for a few minutes just as the news broke that Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a new 165-page brief from Special Counsel Jack Smith . Because of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity for official acts, Smith has had to slightly retool his election-subversion case against Donald Trump, and this brief walks through the facts of his case against Trump in great detail. Smith writes that after Trump lost in 2020, the former president “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” and that he did so as a candidate and not as president —and so the case against him should proceed.
It was the first time we’d seen the sun in D.C. in nearly two weeks. Sunlight. Transparency. Truth. It felt like a good omen.
Those optimistic feelings continue this morning. Today, former Rep. Liz Cheney, who served as the vice chairwoman of the House January 6th Committee, will campaign with Vice President Kamala Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin. Cheney announced weeks ago she would be voting for Harris, and she later said her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, would as well. Ripon is the birthplace of the GOP; gatherings in a one-room schoolhouse there led to the formation of the Republican party in 1854.
It’s a fitting place for Harris to make a direct appeal to Republican and independent voters, and both she and Cheney will speak to the danger of re-electing Trump.
Smith ’s brief reveals new evidence and information about the lead-up to January 6th. Even before the election, the special counsel argues, Trump had planned to “simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.” The filing recounts conversations Trump had with allies right after Election Day—many of them with then–Vice President Mike Pence—during which he was informed “he would likely lose” and that his fraud claims “were false.”
Those scheming to steal the election for Trump “changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day” and “made up figures from whole cloth,” Smith ’s filing alleges. Trump was overheard telling family members that “it doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell,” according to the filing.
Trump spoke with Steve Bannon on January 5, 2021, less than two hours before Bannon said on his podcast that “all hell is going to break loose” the following day at the Capitol.
When Trump was informed that Pence had been evacuated from the Capitol, aides hoped Trump would “take action to ensure Pence’s safety.” Trump’s response to the news was, “So what?”
On the site today, Bulwark contributor Kim Wehle explains how Smith ’s revised indictment presents evidence of “private” actions by Trump, who was committing these crimes in a private capacity as a candidate and well outside the zone of protection for a president’s “official acts” established by the high court’s broad immunity decision.
As Wehle writes, Smith alleges Trump engaged in three conspiracies, and they “all hinge on showing that Trump knew there was no outcome-determinative voter fraud in the election, but that he continued knowingly to make false claims in furtherance of his criminal schemes to illegally thwart the peaceful transfer of power.”
Smith ’s filing is “loaded with evidence to prove the prosecution’s case,” Wehle writes. All of this evidence should have been public months ago. But Trump appealed and received multiple delays, and he seemed to have hit the corruption jack pot with SCOTUS’s immunity ruling. The former president said in an interview with News Nation last night that Smith ’s filing should never have been made public and that “they rigged the election”—the 2024 election, he means. So expect to hear that a lot if he loses November 5.
Trump’s rageposts from last night sound like he knows this actually matters—the usual lunacy frosted with extra desperation :
It’s the panic of a man who recognizes that the most important argument against him is back in the headlines, with new ghastly detail, as the campaign enters its final month.
Trump had gotten lucky, as he often does; his two-month coup attempt that culminated on January 6th had seemed to disappear into the political mist. There is always too much Trump, so we are propelled by the latest outrage to leave the rest behind us.
And Harris makes scant mention of Trump’s attempt to steal the last election as she focuses on policy issues that voters prioritize. And often those who should be talking about January 6th for Harris, keeping it front and center, are not. It wasn’t just whitewashed and memory-holed by Republicans trying to get re-elected. Even those opposed to Trump frequently omit the fact that a president of the United States sought to retain power illegally after losing an election by trying to overturn the results and then inciting a deadly insurrection.
Take former-Gov. John Kasich, for example. Last night he tweeted that he would not be voting for Trump:
Kasich wants hope. That sounds nice. But if Trump is rewarded with a second term after trying to overthrow our government less than four years ago, there is nothing he won’t do in pursuit of his corrupt aims—for power, retribution, and money.
Yes, Trump is divisive and animated solely by his own grievances, but that is not why Harris must defeat him. Trump wants to destroy the system that reins him in. You can count on it. He isn’t a toxic whiner; he is a threat to our democracy.
This is the only reason any voter needs—including Republicans—to vote for Harris. And that needs to remain in the campaign spotlight until the last votes are cast.
We know we can count on Cheney, but others must treat this with the same urgency.
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I actually dont care if Trump goes to prison, I care about the chance of putting someone this phenomenally unqualified into the office of the presidency.
Will he be convicted of this? I dont know. Is he "guilty" of incredibly unpresidential and unAmerican activity ? Absolutely. Is he by any reasonable standard "unfit" for office? Absolutely.
Watching the denials by the right is amazing, but not in a good way.
The Right has lost its way. It is sad, really pathetic, for people to wish to 'own' other people. There is enough freedom to go around for all to enjoy. But, the Right tries to capture and suppress it.
Priority one: ensure this scoundrel does not get elected
Priority two: hold this traitor accountable for his wrongdoing as PotUS
The reason the second item is important is that Trump has lowered the bar substantially for future presidents and for every other politician. If he is not held accountable then his precedent stands. That is a terrible precedent for this nation.
Have you watched the movie Idiocracy? If trmp is elected we will comd dangerously close to living out this movie
Who here is all in for TiG to get in the hibernation chamber?
I have watched it two or three times over the years. Funny movie. It is an exaggeration, but not by much.
Finally justice will be served for Trump's January 6th Insurrection!
Gag!
The fact is, Trump's defenders and boot lickers won't care about their master's criminality, they will only scream and rage in protest because of the special counsel revealing this kind of thing just weeks before the election. Of course, we all know they had ZERO issue with James Comey coming out and announcing that the investigation into Hillary Clinton was being re-opened just 11 days before the 2016 election but they will cry their crocodile tears and scream about how unfair this is and claim their dear Leader is being unjustly targeted but that is to be expected from such monumental hypocrites with no morals and no shame.
excellent point