Trump tried to steal 2020 election knowing he had lost: US special counsel

WASHINGTON: Former President Donald Trump's attempt to wrest the White House despite conclusively losing the presidential election in 2020 returned centerstage on Wednesday with a federal judge unsealing a partially redacted 165-page filing by the Justice Department to reveal startling new details of what transpired in the days leading up to the January 6 insurrection.

Among them, Trump was told by his lawyers that his claims of voting fraud would not stand up to scrutiny, but he blew them off, saying, “the details don’t matter,” as he challenged the results. He later doubled down, saying, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” Trailing Biden during vote counting at some centers, Trump aides searched for excuses to litigate even if it meant riots. And when told by an aide that his Vice President (Mike Pence) was in peril during the storming of the Capitol, Trump replied, “So what?"

Several such disclosures form special counsel Jack Smith's fresh filing in the election interference case in which he argued that Trump can still be prosecuted for private actions aimed at overturning his 2020 election loss, despite the US Supreme Court ruling in July that the President has presumptive immunity for his official presidential acts.

"Although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith argued, urging Judge Tanya Chutkan to rule that Trump “must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.”

“With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost,” Smith wrote, maintaining that Trump “acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted,”

Trump rejected the new filing saying, “The DOJ pushed out this latest ‘hit job’ today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate.” In a tv interview, he said the special counsel Jack Smith "works for Kamala and he works for Joe" and "this was a weaponization of government and that's why it was released 30 days before the election."

Judge Chutkan, also attacked by MAGA activists as a Democrat supporter, indicated that she will not be influenced by the election timetable, but the case is not likely to go to trial before election day on November 5. If Trump wins, he will have the power to direct the DOJ to drop the case. Some of his critics have alleged that his 2024 Presidential run is not just aimed at winning the White House but also to stay out of prison, since a trial is expected to proceed if he loses the election. Although he still insists he won the 2020 election, Trump has conceded in recent times that he "lost by a whisker."

The new filing comes amid growing concerns that a January 6-like situation could develop on November 5 itself with reports already emerging of threats and intimidation of election officials. The Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force set up in 2021 has received hundreds of reports of menacing emails, phone messages and social media posts, but the federal government has been cautious about prosecuting the offenders who present a freedom of expression defense.

Some analysts are already warning of impending chaos on November 5 after Trump himself singled out Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta as potential venues for cheating. All three cities, in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia respectively, have large black populations. While the MAGA supremo typically wins most the the white-dominated rural counties in the state, Democrat votes come from the more diverse urban centers.