| | | 5 takeaways from the big new filing on Trump’s 2020 election plot
“So what,” “Make them riot,” “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” and what it all means legally and politically.
washingtonpost.com
We just got the most extensive new detail in years about former president Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election, in the form of a much-anticipated filing from special counsel Jack Smith.
The 165-page partially redacted filing, which was unsealed by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, lays out the evidence Smith’s team would like to present in the long-delayed Jan. 6 federal criminal case against Trump. What evidence Smith can use and what charges can stand are disputed after the Supreme Court recently gave presidents including Trump extensive immunity from criminal prosecution.
But the filing also doubles as a sort of blueprint for the case ahead. It features some significant revelations and quotes that could be important not just for the legal battle, but for the 2024 election.
Below are some takeaways from the filing.
1. ‘Make them riot’: A prescient comment two months before Jan. 6
A big part of the case against Trump is making clear that he and those around him knew their plan was corrupt — that it wasn’t just them really believing the election was stolen.
One detail in particular stands out.
The filing cites a scene from Nov. 4, 2020, at the TCF Center in Detroit. It says a colleague of a Trump campaign official and an alleged co-conspirator informed them that a batch of votes that heavily favored Joe Biden was apparently correct.
The alleged co-conspirator, whose description matches that of Trump’s Election Day operations chief Mike Roman, allegedly responded by saying: “find a reason it isnt” and “give me options to file litigation.” Then in a mangled message, the co-conspirator seems to suggest that they are not concerned if the claims are frivolous — “even if itbis.”
The colleague suggested such things could lead to a repeat of the so-called Brooks Brothers riot, a fraught scene in South Florida during the contested 2000 presidential election.
The Trump campaign official and co-conspirator allegedly responded: “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”
It’s an eerily prescient comment, given that just two months later, Trump’s false and often nonsensical claims of voter fraud would lead to a large-scale riot at the U.S. Capitol. (It’s worth noting that whether the Brooks Brothers riot was actually particularly violent is disputed.)
It could certainly help prosecutors drive home the point that the people behind the effort to contest the 2020 election didn’t actually care about the evidence and whether they were right; they just wanted to sow doubt.
2. ‘So what?’: Trump’s seeming lack of concern
The filing fills out some key details of what happened after the Capitol riot touched off on Jan. 6, 2021. It repeatedly reinforces the idea that Trump was well aware of what was taking place even as he — for hours — resisted reining in his supporters and even launched an attack on Vice President Mike Pence at 2:24 p.m.
The timeline here was filled out somewhat by the House Jan. 6 select committee, but the filing contains even more detail.
It says that around 1:30 p.m., Trump settled into the dining room next to the Oval Office and “spent the afternoon there reviewing Twitter on his phone,” while Fox News played on TV. It suggests that prosecutors have forensic evidence from the activity logs on Trump’s phone to back up that he was “consistently” using his Twitter application.
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