Five steps taken from key filings in Trump’s 2020 election case

Donald Trump’s alleged criminal efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat are detailed in 165 pages of a new filing from the federal prosecutor investigating him.

The indictment, issued by a judge on Wednesday, lays out in detail how Special Counsel Jack Smith will proceed with his case if it ever goes to trial, which is uncertain. With Trump expected to end the prosecution when he returns to the White House, Mr Smith may not be able to make an opening statement or call a witness.

The Supreme Court ruled this summer that Trump could not be prosecuted for official acts carried out as president, forcing Mr Smith to reverse the landmark case and say Trump committed the crime as a private citizen.

Trump denies he did anything wrong when he tried to deny Joe Biden’s certificate as the winner of the election and his campaign called the document “full of lies”.

Here are five key points detailed in the prosecution’s arguments and testimony released Wednesday.

“It doesn’t matter if you win or lose the election,” Trump said at one point after the election. “You still have to fight like hell.”

The lawsuit cites the comments — reported by an unnamed aide who overheard Trump talking to his family — as evidence that he was trying to sway the outcome.

And the document says Trump laid the groundwork to challenge the election before polling day.

Republicans were allegedly told the results wouldn’t be known on the day most Americans voted – but they may have run into trouble before their Democratic rivals benefited from mail-in voting, which took longer to count.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many voters voted by post.

Trump is said to have told advisers that he would “simply declare the winner before all the votes are counted and any winner is determined”.

Supporters of the former president are very clear about what that means, according to the file.

“He will announce that he has won. That does not mean that he has won, he will just say that he has won,” Trump’s adviser was quoted as telling a private conference of his supporters.

The filing shows how Trump made his plan to win many battleground states before the votes were fully tallied by spreading false claims of fraud.

However, it is said that allegations of fraud made by other associates are not believed.

The lawsuit cites him as telling aides that one unnamed attorney – who appears to be Sidney Powell – made “crazy” claims, likening them to the sci-fi series Star Trek.

“However, the defendant continued to support and disseminate” such allegations, the document said.

In one incident, a White House official reportedly told Trump that his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, would not be able to prove his election fraud claims in court.

“The details don’t matter,” he reportedly replied.

The world saw the deep rift between Pence and Trump that emerged after the election. The coverage includes new details about how their relationship is going.

Mr Smith says that since they discussed it as candidates, Trump’s communication with his deputy was not considered an official act.

Pence, according to the filing, “slowly and gently” tried to convince Trump to accept the election results, “even if it means they lost”.

As Trump continues to spread false fraud claims and file legal challenges, Pence reportedly suggested on November 12 a “face-saving option”: “Don’t give in but be aware that the process is over.”

Days later, he encouraged Trump to accept the loss and run again in four years, to which Trump had to respond: “I don’t know, 2024 is too far away.”

Finally, on January 1, 2021, Trump reportedly told Pence that “hundreds of thousands” of people will “think you’re stupid” for wanting to concede their loss.

Less than a week later, Trump supporters called for Pence to be hanged as they stormed the US Capitol building on January 6, because he plans to endorse Biden’s nomination. Pence fled to the safety of a parking garage.

The filing says that when Trump was told that Pence might be in danger, he allegedly asked: “So now?”

Mr Smith’s team says the Trump campaign has sown “chaos” on the battlefields that risk provoking violence.

While the majority of votes in the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, Michigan, appear to put Biden ahead, Trump’s campaign is said to have told his colleague to “find a reason” that something is wrong with them.

My colleague then suggested that it might cause trouble.

According to the filing, the surgeon replied: “Wake them up.”

Campaign officials in another state, Pennsylvania, are said to have settled the dispute, which was even used to ensure that observers were given proper permission to count the votes.

Prosecutors allege that Trump fueled the January 6 protest at the Capitol by telling the crowd “many of the same lies he’s been telling for months”.

In his speech in Washington that morning, Trump “made it clear that he expects his supporters to take action”, according to the file.

Mr. Smith has said this before, but now he says that Trump fired his supporters as a political candidate, not the president, and that the speech was part of a convention.

His team says Trump “ordered his supporters to the Capitol and suggested he would go with them” to spark further action.

After that, Trump and his allies are said to want to “exploit violence and chaos in the Capitol” to try to delay the certification of the election.

Trump watched the chaos on Twitter and Fox News, the report said, citing phone records from him and former White House staffers. It is said that he also used social media to target Pence and repeatedly “rejected” the requests of advisors to “send a calm message and try to stop the trouble”.

North American journalist Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly newsletter US Election Unspun.

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