The special prosecutor who is investigating the case against Donald Trump for attempts to illegally reverse the results of the 2020 election affirms, in a document made public Wednesday, October 2, that the Republican was acting as a candidate. This means that he may not benefit from presidential immunity in this matter.
In a voluminous written argument of 165 pages, largely redacted to preserve the anonymity of witnesses, presented last week to Judge Tanya Chutkan, prosecutor Jack Smith intends to demonstrate the private nature of the acts for which the former Republican president is being prosecuted. .
According to him, these acts are therefore not covered by the broad criminal immunity granted to the President of the United States by the Supreme Court in an unprecedented decision on July 1.
This document includes previously undisclosed elements of the dossier, such as testimony from a senior White House official at the time, reporting a surprise conversation between Donald Trump, his wife, his daughter and his son-in-law aboard the presidential helicopter.
“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election, you have to fight like a dog”Donald Trump would have told them, according to this testimony that the prosecution intends to present during a future trial.
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Outraged messages from Trump
Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden, “With the help of private accomplices, the defendant embarked on a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate results in seven states that he had lost” narrowly, writes Jack Smith. These attempts culminated in the assault on the Capitol, the sanctuary of American democracy, by hundreds of white-hot supporters of Donald Trump, he recalls.
“The heart of the scheme was private in nature. He extensively used private actors and his campaign structures to attempt to overturn the results of the election and acted in his private capacity as a candidate.concludes the special prosecutor.
The former president and current Republican candidate reacted to this publication in a series of outraged messages on his Truth Social network, denouncing a document “riddled with falsehoods” and accusing the outgoing Democratic administration of“electoral interference”.
By a majority of six votes to three – conservative judges against progressives – the Supreme Court considered that the president did not enjoy “no immunity for his unofficial acts” but had “right to at least a presumption of immunity for his official acts”.
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Targeted by several criminal proceedings, Donald Trump is doing everything possible to go to trial as late as possible, at least after the vote on November 5. If he were elected again, once inaugurated in January 2025, he could order a halt to federal proceedings against him.
Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers Assault on the Capitol: at the Supreme Court, the debates on Donald Trump’s immunity remove the prospect of a trial
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