Trump Erupts in Incoherent Rants After New Court Brief Details How He ‘Resorted to Crimes’ to Defy 2020 Election

Ross A. Lincoln
Wed, October 2, 2024

A new court brief filed by Special Counselor Jack Smith on Wednesday provides extensive detail about how Donald Trump “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office” after the 2020 election, and Trump himself is pitching a fit over it.

Drawing from his usual tired collection of stock phrases and attacks on critics, Trump lashed out at “deranged” Smith and “Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats” in multiple incoherent rants posted on Truth Social

To start, Trump complained that the filing is “falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional,” and then slipped in an irrelevant insult against Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz. After that, he swerved into randomly capitalized accusations that Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden are the ones trying to “Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.”

This culminated in a somewhat lazy effort to fling the court filing’s words back, when he said his enemies are “HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power.

Then the former president followed that up with another Truth Social rant in which he insisted — referring to himself in third person of course — that he “is dominating” the 2024 race, and before you ask, yes he claimed that he’s polling ahead of Harris (as of this writing, he’s not). He also threw in his traditional references to “Deep State” and “Witch Hunt.”

After that came a lengthier ALL CAPS tirade that reads less like the statement of a functional former U.S. President, and more like drunken MAGA Mad Libs, which we’ll quote verbatim:

“WHETHER NOW THE FULLY DEBUNKED RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, IRAN, IRAN, IRAN, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, 51 INTELLIGENCE AGENTS, SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN, IMPEACHMENT HOAX NUMBER ONE, IMPEACHMENT HOAX NUMBER TWO, OR ANY OF THE OTHER SCAMS, THIS ILLEGAL ACTION TAKEN BY THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, INCLUDING THEIR RAID ON MAR-A-LAGO FOR A CASE THAT WAS DISMISSED, WILL END JUST LIKE ALL OF THE OTHERS – WITH COMPLETE VICTORY FOR ‘PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.’ MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he posted.

Trump concluded by metaphorically taking his ball and going home, fuming “I didn’t rig the 2020 election, they did!”

Trump is not accused of rigging the election, he is being prosecuted for actions that were witnessed by millions: His efforts in 2020 and early 2021 to illegally overturn the election results, culminating in his incitement of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.

The prosecution of these crimes was delayed earlier this year thanks to the Supreme Court’s astonishing ruling in Trump v. U.S. that created a previously nonexistent concept of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. This immunity was conferred upon vaguely defined “official” acts that SCOTUS said would need to be defined by lower courts, imposing delays that have virtually guaranteed Trump won’t face trial until after this year’s election.

Special Counselor Jack Smith submitted a revised indictment in August that accounts for Trump v. U.S.; the 165-page motion filed on Wednesday lays out the new case in (frequently redacted) detail.

It’s divided into four key sections. In the first, prosecutors describe their evidence against Trump. In the second, the legal issues surrounding presidential immunity are described. The third section expounds upon what is and is not covered by presidential immunity and emphasizes that “nothing the Government intends to present to the jury is protected by presidential immunity.” The fourth and final section describes why the court should rule Trump stand trial.

“The defendant 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,” the brief begins.

“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” the filing also reads. “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 Vice President Michael R. Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to obstruct Congress’s 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.”

The common theme was “deceit” the filing continues.

“At its core, the defendant’s scheme was a private criminal effort,” Smith writes later in the filing. “In his capacity as a candidate, the defendant used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process, which through the Constitution, ECA, and state laws includes the states’ notification to the federal government of the selection of their representative electors based on the popular vote in the state; the meeting of those electors to cast their votes consistent with the popular vote; and Congress’s counting of the electors’ votes at a certification proceeding.”

Prosecutors believe Trump told his advisers in the weeks before the election in the event that many Democrats would cast their votes by mail and therefore their votes would be counted after Election Day, he would “simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.” An adviser, who remains unnamed, began to put the plan into motion.

Trump is also accused of having asked former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to challenge the election’s integrity. Trump’s campaign also attempted to challenge Biden’s wins in swing states Arizona, Georgia and Michigan. The campaign then pushed claims of fraud that were untrue and attempted to appoint other electors in response.

“As late as January, the conspirators attempted to keep the full nature of the elector plan secret,” the filing also explains.

You can read the entire filing in full here.