A new unsealed court document claims Donald Trump was guilty of “crimes in an attempt to stay in power” after losing the 2020 US presidential election.
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Former US President Donald Trump was guilty of ” crimes » in a failed attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.
That’s the conclusion of federal prosecutors in a legal file unveiled on Wednesday. They say the former president is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.
Attorney Jack Smith filed the document following a Supreme Court opinion that grants broad immunity to former presidents for official acts they perform in office, narrowing the scope of prosecution of Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Although the months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself detailed Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, the filing cites previously unknown testimony . Close collaborators of Donald Trump draw up the portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who, while losing his grip on the White House, “resorted to deception to target every step of the electoral process ».
The goal of this filing is to convince U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offenses charged in the indictment are private, not official, acts and therefore can continue to be committed part of the indictment.
These include efforts to persuade former Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the electoral vote count on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.
“Although the defendant was the sitting president during the alleged conspiracies, his plan was fundamentally private”estimates Mr. Smith’s team. “Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he used multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deception, the government function by which votes are collected and counted – a function in which the accused, as president, had no official role. »
“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election,” he was guilty of “criminal acts in an attempt to remain in office.”
Donald Trump denounces a legal file “riddled with falsehoods” and accuses the Biden administration of “electoral interference”.
