WASHINGTON — Donald Trump grew “increasingly desperate” to stay in power that he and his allies’ use sweeping efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a new detailed filing Wednesday by special counsel Jack Smith.
Smith writes that Trump was acting as a private candidate for office and not as president of the United States when he sought to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Trump “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office” after his loss, Smith’s team wrote. The filing went on to say Trump 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.”
“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” the filing said. “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.”
Prosecutors allege that Trump fomented violence, describing the former president as directly responsible for “the tinderbox that he purposely ignited on January 6.”
“The defendant also knew that he had only one last hope to prevent Biden’s certification as President: the large and angry crowd standing in front of him. So for more than an hour, the defendant delivered a speech designed to inflame his supporters and motivate them to march to the Capitol,” Smith wrote.
In the 189-page filing, prosecutors say Trump’s advisers disproved his allegations of voter fraud but the former president knowingly pushed them anyway — even to members of his family.
“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell,” Trump allegedly told members of his family following the 2020 election.
Trump “laid the groundwork for his crimes well before Election Day”, including by sowing doubt among his supporters and planned to declare victory immediately, despite multiple advisers warning him that the results were unlikely to be finalized on Election Day, prosecutors said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
