Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” in a failed bid to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said in a newly unsealed court filing that argues that the former US president is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.
The filing was unsealed on Wednesday. It was submitted by special counsel Jack Smith’s team following a supreme court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents and narrowed the scope of the prosecution.
Trump’s legal team have employed a delaying strategy in all the numerous legal cases that Trump faces that has mostly been successful.
The 165-page filing is probably the last opportunity for prosecutors to detail their case against Trump before the 5 November election given there will not be a trial before Trump faces the Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris.
Prosecutors laid out details including an allegation that a White House staffer heard Trump tell family members that it did not matter if he won or lost the election, “you still have to fight like hell”.
The new filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who, while losing his grip on the White House, “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process”.“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being alerted that his vice-president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a crowd of violent supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6.
“The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges would not be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.
The filing includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on 12 November 2020, in which Pence “reiterated a face-saving option” for Trump, telling him: “Don’t concede but recognize the process is over,” according to prosecutors.In another private lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024.
“I don’t know, 2024 is so far off,” Trump told him, according to the filing.
But Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states – including those in his own party – who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false,” prosecutors wrote.
“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team wrote, adding: “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to four criminal charges accusing him of a conspiracy to obstruct the congressional certification of the election, defraud the US out of accurate results and interfere with Americans’ voting rights.
Prosecutors working with Smith divulged their evidence to make the case that the remaining allegations against Trump survive the US supreme court’s ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken as president.
Prosecutors have said the filing will discuss new evidence, including transcripts of witness interviews and grand jury testimony, but much of that material will not be made public until a trial.
Senior officials in Trump’s administration including the former vice-president Mike Pence and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows appeared before the grand jury during the investigation.
Prosecutors submitted the court filing on Thursday, but US district judge Tanya Chutkan had to approve proposed redactions before it was made public.
Trump’s lawyers opposed allowing Smith to issue a sweeping court filing laying out their evidence, arguing it would be inappropriate to do so weeks before the election. They have argued the entire case should be tossed out based on the supreme court’s ruling.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and Democrats were “hell-bent on weaponizing the justice department in an attempt to cling to power”.
“The release of the falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine American Democracy and interfere in this election.”
The US presidential election is a neck-and-neck contest, with Harris establishing a slight but solid lead over Trump in most national voting surveys. The picture in the all-important swing states is more complex, however, as tight races in these key contests will decide the election.
If Trump wins the election, he is likely to direct the justice department to drop the charges.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting