October 16, 2024
WASHINGTON, DC — A group of federal prosecutors led by the special counsel Jack Smith concluded Wednesday that former President Donald Trump is behind the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. This assertion follows Trump’s recent effort to have charges against him dropped. Smith’s team says the post-mortem indictment Trump was given last August specifically connects what he did to what occurred on that day.
The filing argues that it is “incorrect” for Trump’s legal team to claim that the indictment does not hold him accountable for the January 6 attack. Instead, Smith’s team contends that Trump “willfully caused others” to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. They argue that Trump’s repeated claims of election fraud and efforts to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence and other lawmakers were pivotal in provoking the chaos that unfolded.
“Those allegations link the defendant’s actions on January 6 directly to his efforts to corruptly obstruct the certification proceeding,” reads the filing. Smith’s team further claims that Trump summoned his supporters to Washington, D.C., directed them to march to the Capitol, and pushed them to pressurize Pence and lawmakers to reject the certified election results in favor of fraudulent electors.
The charge even goes on to claim that Trump used the Capitol-fire to his own gain. It also reveals an instance of Trump apparently saying “So what?” after he made fun of Pence on social media when he learned that vice president Pence had been escorted to a secure location to be safe.
Trump’s legal team has pushed back against these allegations, arguing in a previous filing that the indictment “stretches generally applicable statutes beyond their breaking point” and seeks to “assign blame for events President Trump did not control and took action to protect against.” They maintain that Trump did not incite the violence on January 6 and that he was acting within his rights as a candidate and president.
Smith’s attorneys are engaged in the litigation battle with Trump’s attorney and this is occurring in the last few weeks before Election Day, when Trump is fighting to retake the presidency. Trump has not admitted any wrongdoing and insists that the charges are political. The outgoing president has long attacked the special counsel’s probe as a bid to destroy his 2024 campaign.
In that filing, she came on the heels of an extremely consequential legal ruling by the Supreme Court, which partly rejected Smith’s presidential immunity arguments. This decision tempered the case but did not reach the essence of Trump’s charges.
The new charge accuses Trump of fabricating information about the 2020 election in an attempt to reverse the outcome. It says that Trump and his cronies created and circulated false electoral certificates in order to interfere with the certification process.
Smith’s team contends that Trump’s motion to dismiss the charges lacks legal merit, stating, “Trump’s dismissal filing fails to identify any pleading flaw in the superseding indictment warranting its dismissal” and that it “ignores entirely that the case against him includes allegations that he and his co-conspirators sought to create and use false evidence — fraudulent electoral certificates — as a means of obstructing the certification proceeding.”
The case’s judge, Tanya Chutkan, recently extended a deadline that Trump’s lawyers had requested to hold up a vital filing on claims of presidential immunity until after the election. Thus, the case might depend on whether the election goes through, with Trump’s motion now due November 7 and the government’s reply on Nov. 21.
Even in the current litigation phase, everything is at stake, and a trial could have an immediate impact on Trump’s political future. The special counsel’s prosecution of Trump is a reminder of the continued questioning of his role following the January 6th events and that it calls into question how the president should act and what he owes.
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