Former US President Donald Trump, accused of having wanted to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election, acted as a candidate, says the special prosecutor. The Republican cannot therefore benefit from presidential immunity, he adds.
In a voluminous 165-page argument, published Wednesday and largely redacted to preserve the anonymity of witnesses, special 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 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 elements of the file, not published until now, 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 whether you won or lost the election, you have to fight like a dog,’ Donald Trump allegedly told them, according to this testimony that the prosecution plans to present at a future trial.
Storming of the Capitol
Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by Democratic candidate Joe Biden, ‘with the help of private accomplices, the defendant embarked on a series of increasingly desperate plans to reverse the legitimate results in seven states he had narrowly lost, writes Jack Smith.
These attempts culminated with the assault on the Capitol by hundreds of white-hot Donald Trump supporters, 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,’ the Special Prosecutor concludes.
Outraged, Donald Trump reacted to this publication in a series of messages on his Truth Social network, denouncing a document ‘riddled with falsehoods’ and accusing the outgoing Democratic government of ‘electoral interference’.
By a majority of six votes to three – conservative judges against progressives – the supreme court considered that the president enjoyed ‘no immunity for his unofficial acts’, but was ‘entitled at least to a presumption of immunity for his official acts.
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.
/ATS
