11 new damning details unveiled in the Trump election case

Special counsel Jack Smith won’t get a chance to bring his best criminal case against Donald Trump to trial before the 2024 election — and if Trump wins, Smith probably will never get that chance. But on Wednesday, the public got its most complete look at the evidence Smith has amassed to try to prove that the former president orchestrated criminal conspiracies as he sought to overturn his loss four years ago.

In a 165-page legal brief unsealed by a federal judge (albeit with some redactions), the special counsel fleshed out detailed evidence he would use against Trump at trial, if the case ever makes it that far. Smith also presented his arguments for why Trump is not immune from the charges, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling over the summer that granted presidents broad immunity for official acts.

Much of Smith’s brief focused on Trump’s state of mind in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith described a slew of conversations suggesting that the then-president knew his claims of election fraud were spurious. And Smith laid out evidence that Trump’s sole objective was to stay in power — not, as he and his lawyers have claimed, to exercise legitimate authority over election integrity.

Here’s POLITICO’s look at the most significant and striking details in Smith’s brief.

Alone with his phone

At 2:24 p.m. on Jan. 6, as Trump supporters were attacking the Capitol, Trump took to Twitter to condemn Vice President Mike Pence, saying Pence lacked “courage” because Pence had resisted Trump’s pressure to intervene in the Electoral College certification.

According to Smith’s prosecutors, Trump was alone in the White House dining room when he sent that tweet. Trump’s aides had left him there after failing to persuade him to call on his supporters to leave the Capitol.

“The defendant personally posted the tweet … at a point when he already understood the Capitol had been breached,” prosecutors wrote.

Trump asked: ‘So what?’

The tweet criticizing Pence coincided with one of the most perilous moments of the riot: the precise minute Pence was being evacuated from his Senate office to a loading dock below the Capitol. Rioters had come within 40 feet of where he was sheltering just before this moment.

When Trump was told by an aide of Pence’s evacuation, prosecutors say Trump responded: “So what?”

Trump’s first call for calm — which advisers viewed as insufficient — came 14 minutes later: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

Disregarding the results

According to prosecutors, at one point during Trump’s bid to overturn the results, a Trump White House aide overheard Trump tell his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” The comment was allegedly made on Marine One.

Inventing statistics

Prosecutors said they would prove at trial that Trump and his allies often made up statistics about voter fraud “from whole cloth.” For example, Trump and allies alleged that 36,000 noncitizens had cast ballots in Arizona, changing the figure to “a few hundred thousand” five days later, eventually revising it back to “bare minimum … 40 or 50,000,” then to 32,000 and back up to the original number of 36,000.

Broken promises of evidence

One week after Election Day in 2020, Trump told then-Gov. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) that he was “packaging up” fraud evidence to share with him, prosecutors wrote. But Trump never provided it. Ducey told Trump that Arizona was all but lost, comparing it to being in “the ninth inning, two outs, and [the defendant] was several runs down,” Smith’s brief recounted.

Mocking Sidney Powell

After a Fox News host called out Trump-aligned lawyer Sidney Powell for making bizarre claims about Dominion Voting machines, Trump called her on speakerphone. On the Nov. 20, 2020 call, Trump muted his line and mocked her to two aides, calling her claims about the election “crazy” and making a reference to Star Trek, prosecutors contend. On another occasion, he called Powell “unhinged.”

Though it’s not referenced in Smith’s new filing or his indictment, Trump later considered naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate election fraud, and he considered a proposal she crafted to seize voting machines from swing states for a forensic inspection.

Trump’s Jan. 5 call to Steve Bannon

Prosecutors, who had more access to telephone records and emails than the congressional committee that investigated Jan. 6, allege that Trump spoke to ally Steve Bannon by phone on Jan. 5 less than two hours before Bannon issued a prescient and provocative prediction on his War Room podcast that “all hell is going to break loose” on Jan. 6.

A preview of forensic evidence

Prosecutors plan to have an FBI computer forensic examiner testify about Trump’s phone use on Jan. 6. They say it will show which news and social media apps he had on his phone and will reveal that Trump was on Twitter for much of the day. Prosecutors also plan to show at trial what Fox News was broadcasting at specific times during the day, since Trump had it on in the dining room and was watching coverage of the riot.

‘Make them riot’

Well before Jan. 6, an unidentified Trump campaign employee enthusiastically spoke of the potential for a riot in Michigan. The employee, whom prosecutors described as a co-conspirator, allegedly sought to “create chaos” at a polling center in Detroit when it became clear a batch of election returns favorable to Biden was legitimate. “Find a reason it isn’t,” the alleged co-conspirator said to a colleague, prosecutors wrote. When the colleague said an outbreak of violence appeared imminent, the campaign employee replied: “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”

Rudy’s rise

Trump sidelined his campaign lawyers on Nov. 13, 2020, with Bannon informing another Trump campaign adviser — and alleged co-conspirator — that Trump had replaced them in the pecking order with Rudy Giuliani. Bannon said he told Trump that without Giuliani in charge, “this thing is over.” “Trump is in to the end,” Bannon added, according to prosecutors.

Rudy’s follies

Counting on Giuliani didn’t turn out so well. Smith’s brief includes yet another instance of Giuliani’s prolific record of butt-dialing and clumsy cell phone use. Prosecutors say he attempted to send a proposed resolution to Michigan lawmakers declaring the election to be in dispute — but sent it to the wrong number.