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trump v united states
New Motion Presents Most Detailed Case Yet Against Trump for Insurrection Crimes
"The desperate plan that Trump embarked on to try and overturn the results of a legitimate election was reprehensible, irresponsible, and—the document shows—criminal," said one consumer advocate.
Oct 02, 2024
Jack Smith, the special counsel probing former U.S. President Donald Trump's attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential contest, on Wednesday presented a massive trove of fresh evidence supporting his election interference case against the 2024 Republican nominee.
Smith's sprawling and highly anticipated 165-page motion—which was partly unsealed Wednesday by presiding U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan—states that Trump "asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct. Not so."
Trump—who in August 2023 was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights—contends that his actions were taken in his official capacity as president and not as a private individual.
In July, the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing justices—including three Trump appointees—ruled that the ex-president is entitled to "absolute immunity" for "official acts" taken while he was in office, raising questions about the future of this case. According to Smith's motion:
Although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one. Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant 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—a function in which the defendant, as president, had no official role.
In Trump v. United States... the Supreme Court held that presidents are immune from prosecution for certain official conduct—including the defendant's use of the Justice Department in furtherance of his scheme, as was alleged in the original indictment—and remanded to this court to determine whether the remaining allegations against the defendant are immunized.
The answer to that question is no. This motion provides a comprehensive account of the defendant's private criminal conduct; sets forth the legal framework created by Trump for resolving immunity claims; applies that framework to establish that none of the defendant's charged conduct is immunized because it either was unofficial or any presumptive immunity is rebutted; and requests the relief the government seeks, which is, at bottom, this: that the court determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.
Smith's filing details what Trump told various people in his inner circle, including then-Vice President Mike Pence, his now-disgraced and twice-disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and leading White House and Republican Party figures—some of whose names remain undisclosed.
The motion also highlights Trump's actions on January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. Trump is still pushing his "Big Lie" that Democrats stole the 2020 election; his running mate, U.S. Sen. J D Vance (R-Ohio), on Tuesday
refused to acknowledge that Trump lost to Biden when he was asked about the election during a vice presidential debate against Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
"Upon receiving a phone call alerting him that Pence had been taken to a secure location, [PERSON 15] rushed to the dining room to inform [Trump] in hopes that the defendant would take action to ensure Pence's safety," the filing states. "Instead, after [P15] delivered the news, the defendant looked at him and said only, 'So what?'"
Smith argued that deceit was central to Trump's efforts, specifically, "the defendant's and co-conspirators' knowingly false claims of election fraud," which they used to purvey the Big Lie.
The motion states:
When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. 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—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (the "targeted states"). His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts; manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states; attempting to enlist Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, to obstruct Congress' certification of the election by using the defendant's fraudulent electoral votes; and when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification.
For a historic second time, Trump was
impeached by the House of Representatives following his effort to subvert the election, although he was subsequently acquitted by the Senate.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung
blasted Smith's motion as "unconstitutional" and "falsehood-ridden."
"Deranged Jack Smith and Washington D.C. Radical Democrats are hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power," Cheung said in a statement aping Trump's habit of overcapitalizing words. "President Trump is dominating, and the Radical Democrats throughout the Deep State are freaking out. This entire case is a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely, together with ALL of the remaining Democrat hoaxes."
Democracy defenders, however, welcomed Smith's ruling.
"Jack Smith has shown us yet again the merits of his case against former President Trump," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and co-chair of the Not Above the Law Coalition.
"In his filing, Smith clarifies that the alleged criminal actions occurred while Trump was acting as a private citizen," Gilbert added. "The desperate plan that Trump embarked on to try and overturn the results of a legitimate election was reprehensible, irresponsible, and—the document shows—criminal. Accountability to the American people and our democracy is our only path forward."
Judge Chutkan unsealed the motion five weeks before Trump will face off against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in a tight presidential election. If he wins, Trump will have the power to order the Department of Justice to drop the criminal charges against him.
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New Revelations Show Just How Corrupt the Supreme Court Really Is
Call me naïve. At the beginning of this year, I felt confident in asserting that the court was a conservative court, a Federalist Society court, even a Republican court—but not a MAGA court.
Sep 18, 2024
Last spring, Justice Samuel Alito had drafted an opinion dropping federal charges against many of the January 6 insurrectionists who violently stormed the Capitol. The ruling in Fischer v. United States had not yet been released. Then The New York Times published a startling story: Alito himself had flown the flag of insurrection at his home. (He briefly blamed it on his wife: “She is fond of flying flags.”) Days later, it was reported that he had flown such flags at his vacation home as well.
Awkward! Grounds for recusal? Time to rethink the ruling? Nah. Instead, Chief Justice John Roberts quietly took Alito’s embarrassing name off the opinion and slipped his own name onto it instead.
That is just one of the gobsmacking revelations from a story by Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak that appeared in The New York Times last weekend. The lurid news of the day quickly overwhelmed it—the gunman arrested outside Donald Trump’s golf course, the continued smear campaign by former President Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) against the Haitian immigrant community in a small city in Ohio, and more.
Throughout American history, overreach by the Supreme Court has provoked a response.
But we must not let these revelations fade from view. They paint a damning and indelible picture of how John Roberts, for all his vaunted “institutionalism” and piety about calling “balls and strikes,” steered the court to shield Trump from accountability for his misdeeds.
Call me naïve. At the beginning of this year, I thought I had few illusions about the court. I had just published a harshly critical book, The Supermajority. But I felt confident in asserting that the court was a conservative court, a Federalist Society court, even a Republican court—but not a MAGA court. It had not yet shown an appetite for excusing Trump from the reach of the law.
So I, along with most legal observers, assumed that the justices would let Trump’s trial proceed. I thought there was a good chance it would be unanimous, that Roberts would work behind the scenes to ensure that the court spoke with one voice on major issues of presidential power and constitutional law. That’s what other chief justices did, most notably Warren Burger in United States v. Nixon, the Watergate tapes case and the closest analogue to the Trump trial ruling.
After all, we all thought, Trump v. United States was legally easy. Indeed, the possibility of criminal charges was the stated reason why Republican senators did not vote to convict him of the January 6 charges in Trump’s second impeachment trial.
Many of us, too, sensed there was a deal afoot—a unanimous ruling that Trump could not be thrown off the ballot by one state under the 14th Amendment and a principled ruling on the criminal trial.
Behind the velvet curtain of the court, though, there was no deal. Roberts wrote a memo in February—before the court had even announced that it would hear Trump’s appeal—declaring that the court would give the former president a huge win. “I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently” from the appeals court, he wrote. As Kantor and Liptak summarized, “In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.”
They detailed myriad other ways that Roberts steered rulings Trump’s way. He froze out Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The ruling was sloppy and immunized vast areas of potential presidential wrongdoing. The Times noted that NYU Law professor Trevor Morrison had discovered that Roberts selectively edited a quote from a key earlier ruling to help Trump.
The resulting ruling tells future presidents that they can break the law, plainly and flagrantly. As long as they conspire with other government officials, it will be effectively immunized. (Order your White House counsel to pay hush money, as Richard Nixon did, not your campaign manager, and you’ll be off the hook.)
The opinion has widely and correctly been scorned as one of the worst in American history—a rip in the constitutional fabric. The Times’ tick-tock makes clear that this was not a baffling anomaly. Rather, it is the biggest, most visible, and perhaps most consequential in a series of actions taken by a corrupted court. It follows Citizens United, Shelby County, and other rulings that systematically undid key democratic protections.
Throughout American history, overreach by the Supreme Court has provoked a response. Dred Scott did in the 1850s—it helped lead to a civil war. Reactionary rulings such as Lochner did in the early 20th century. Trump v. United States should join with the Dobbs abortion rights ruling to spur a similar backlash today.
We’ve argued for an 18-year term limit for Supreme Court justices, because nobody should have too much public power for too long. And we’ve urged a binding code of ethics, which would have forced Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas to step out of these key cases. These reforms are widely popular. Most recently, a Fox News poll this summer found that 78% support term limits.
The court is a broken institution. It’s time to fix it. The latest revelations remind us that otherwise, the fix is in.
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After Immunity Ruling, Trump Indicted Again for Trying to Reverse 2020 Election
"Congratulations to Donald Trump on being the historic first-ever major party presidential nominee to be indicted after the convention," quipped one observer.
Aug 27, 2024
This is a breaking news story... Please check back for possible updates.
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump was hit Tuesday with yet another federal indictment for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment that revises earlier felony charges against Trump in the election subversion case. The revised indictment comes in response to the U.S. Supreme Court's July Trump v. United States ruling, which affirmed presidents' "absolute immunity" for "official acts" taken while in office.
None of the four charges against Trump—conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights—have been dropped.
However, parts of Smith's initial indictment—like Trump's conversations with officials at the Department of Justice after the 2020 election—are no longer admissible under the high court's ruling.
"Trump is therefore absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority in the decision.
To secure the new indictment, Smith presented his evidence to an entirely new grand jury.
"So, a new group of American citizens, doing their civic duty, sat and heard this evidence and returned 'a true bill' against Trump for the four charges in this superseding indictment," observedMSNBC's Katie Phang.
Reacting to the new indictment on his Truth social network, Trump fumed with his usual overcapitalization that "no Presidential Candidate, or Candidate for any Office, has ever had to put up with all of this Lawfare and Weaponization directly out of the Office of a Political Opponent."
"The whole case should be thrown out and dismissed on Presidential Immunity grounds, as already ruled unequivocally by the U.S. Supreme Court," Trump said. "What they are doing now is the single greatest sabotage of our Democracy in History."
Grant Stern, the executive editor of Occupy Democrats, quipped on social media, "Congratulations to Donald Trump on being the historic first-ever major party presidential nominee to be indicted after the convention."
Trump was impeached twice during his presidency, including for inciting the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol by believers of the then-president's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential contest was "rigged" by Democrats. He was not convicted by the Senate in either case.
In May, a New York state jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts related to the falsification of business records regarding hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 presidential election. It was the first time in U.S. history that a former president was convicted of felony crimes.
In Georgia, the state Court of Appeals last month paused proceedings in a separate election interference case against Trump and other defendants until an appellate panel determines whether the prosecuting district attorney should be disqualified for an alleged conflict of interest. Trump faces 10 felony charges in the case, including violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations Act, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, false statements and writing, and filing false documents.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon—a Trump appointee—dismissed 40 felony charges against the former president over his alleged mishandling of classified government documents after he left office. On Monday, Smith urged an appeals court to reverse Cannon's dismissal.
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