Trump 'resorted to crimes' to stay in office after 2020 loss, Jack Smith's team says
Donald Trump was "fundamentally" acting as a private candidate not as president when he sought to overturn his 2020 election loss, special counsel Jack Smith aruged in a new filing.
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump was “fundamentally” acting as a private candidate for office and not as president of the United States when he sought to overturn his 2020 election loss, special counsel Jack Smith’s team argued in a filing Wednesday that revealed new details of the scheme at the heart of Trump’s federal election interference case.
The filing asserts that Trump knew that the claims he was spreading about the 2020 election were lies, with Smith's team arguing that Trump didn't believe his own falsehoods but instead spread them as part of his broader scheme to stay in power.
As officers were being brutally assaulted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Smith's team says, Trump was scrolling Twitter, according to an analysis by an FBI expert that is among the revelations in the new filing. Smith's team says a future trial would feature testimony from the FBI forensic expert.
"The phone’s activity logs show that the defendant was using his phone, and in particular, using the Twitter application, consistently throughout the day after he returned from the Ellipse speech," Smith's team wrote.
The special counsel's office also argues for the inclusion of testimony from former Vice President Mike Pence, saying some of Trump and Pence's discussions were not in their official roles but rather were discussions "in their private capacities as running mates."
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