In a recent filing, special counsel Jack Smith’s team argued that former President Donald Trump was acting as a private candidate for office rather than as the president of the United States when he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss. The filing revealed new details of the scheme at the center of Trump’s federal election interference case. The Supreme Court had ruled that Trump had immunity for some actions taken as president, but prosecutors could still pursue charges related to his private actions. A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment against Trump in August.
According to Smith’s team, Trump resorted to criminal means in an attempt to stay in office after losing the election. He allegedly launched plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states he lost. Trump was said to have known that his claims about election fraud were false and relied on campaign employees and volunteers to carry out his alleged scheme. His team argued that Trump acted as a candidate when he engaged in criminal activities to disrupt the government function of collecting and counting votes.
The filing also revealed that Trump had been informed that election night results might be misleading due to the time required to count mail-in ballots, which were expected to favor Joe Biden. Despite this, Trump reportedly planned to declare victory before all ballots were counted and began laying the groundwork by suggesting he would only lose if there was fraud. This story is still developing, and updates are expected.
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