• A judge released a motion detailing prosecutors’ new evidence in the January 6 case against Donald Trump.
• The motion by special counsel Jack Smith follows a revised indictment against the former president.
• Smith argued in the motion that Trump is not immune from charges tied to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The federal judge overseeing the election interference case against Donald Trump has released prosecutors’ 165-page motion detailing a trove of new evidence against the former president.

United States District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan released the motion by special counsel Jack Smith after Smith and his team in August hit Trump with a revised indictment that keeps the same four counts against him.

The revamped indictment was a response to the US Supreme Court’s recent landmark opinion from that provides presidents with broad protection from being prosecuted for official acts.

Trump remains charged with four counts of interfering with the 2020 election. Those counts allege that he conspired to defraud the United States, that he conspired to obstruct the certification of the electoral vote count, that he did obstruct that certification, and that he conspired to deprive voters of the right to have their votes counted.

In Smith’s newly-unsealed motion, he argues that Trump is not immune from criminal charges tied to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“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,” Smith wrote at the top of the lengthy court filing.

“Not so. Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith alleged.

While working with a group of “private co-conspirators,” Smith alleges that Trump “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.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung bashed the motion and the case against Trump in a statement to Business Insider, saying: “The release of the falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine American Democracy and interfere in this election.”

“Deranged Jack Smith and Washington DC Radical Democrats are hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power,” Cheung said. “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.”

These are some of the biggest takeaways from the document.

The Pence pressure campaign

The filing is the government’s most detailed version yet of its case against Trump, including its description of the former president’s alleged pressure campaign against his vice president, Mike Pence.

“The defendant and his co-conspirators recognized that Pence, by virtue of his ministerial role presiding over the January 6 congressional certification, would need to be a key part of their plan to obstruct the certification proceeding,” reads the filing, signed by Smith and Senior Assistant Special Counsel Molly Gaston.

It quotes repeatedly from Pence’s memoir, So Help Me God,” and from internal memos in which Trump’s co-conspirators “outlined a plan for Pence to ‘gavel’ in the defendant as winner of the election.”

Under the failed plan, Pence would assert the false claim that “7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors,” the filing says, quoting from one memo.

Under the plan, prosecutors say, Pence would then use that invented dispute as an excuse to essentially unilaterally anoint Trump as the victor.

Trump and his co-conspirators knew Pence had no authority to do so, Gaston wrote. And at least two co-conspirators knew they needed to hide their plotting.

When one asked in a text message, “Is Pence really likely to be on board with this?” another responded, “Let’s keep this off text for now.”

Pence continued to push back against the plan throughout the end of December 2020, even as “the defendant began to directly and repeatedly pressure Pence at the same time that he continued summoning his supporters to amass in Washington, DC, on the day of the congressional certification,” the filing reads.

“You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome,” Pence told Trump, a quotation Gaston lifts from and credits to Pence’s memoir.

On December 28, Trump told Pence “hundreds of thousands” of people “are gone hate your guts,” the filing says, again quoting from the memoir.

“You’re too honest,” Trump complained, according to Pence.

“I’m gonna have to say you did a great disservice,” the filing — again quoting from the memoir — says Trump threatened his balking vice president in a phone call lon January 5, a day before certification.

“You gotta be tough tomorrow,” Trump also allegedly warned, in another call that night.

Thirty minutes later, at 10 p.m., Trump issued a false public statement reading, “the Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”

Trump knew from Pence’s repeated refusals that this was a lie, but said it to exert further pressure, Gaston writes. At 1 a.m. on January 6, Trump exerted still more pressure, falsely tweeting “If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency.”

After his final attempt to pressure Pence directly failed later that morning, Trump “sent to the Capitol a crowd of angry supporters, whom the defendant had called to the city and inundated with false claims of outcome-determinative election fraud, to induce Pence not to certify the legitimate electoral votes and to obstruct the certification,” the filing says

Trump’s communications with Pence are not official conduct.

Jack Smith details in his motion why prosecutors believe the then-vice president’s discussions with Trump should not be classified as official presidential conduct.

“The only conduct alleged in the original indictment that the Supreme Court held was official, and subject to at least a rebuttable presumption of immunity, was the defendant’s attempts to lie to and pressure Vice President Pence to misuse his role as President of the Senate at the congressional certification,” Smith wrote.

“The Supreme Court stated that “[w]henever the President and Vice President discuss their official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct.”

Smith disagrees. The executive branch, he wrote, has no official role in the election certification process.

“Because the Executive Branch has no role in the certification proceeding—and indeed, the President was purposely excluded from it by design—prosecuting the defendant for his corrupt efforts regarding Pence poses no danger to the executive branch’s authority of functioning,” he continued.

There’s evidence that only Trump sent the ‘Mike Pence didn’t have courage’ tweet

Smith said that his team is prepared to call a key Trump official at trial who would testify that only Trump could have sent out his mid-Capitol riot tweet that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage” to overturn the election.

“The Government will elicit from [redacted] at trial that he was the only person other than the defendant with the ability to post to the defendant’s Twitter account, that he sent tweets only at the defendant’s express direction, and that [redacted] did not send certain specific Tweets, including one at 2:24 p.m. on January 6, 2021,” Smith file.

It’s unclear who the exact staffer in question, as his name was redacted.

Smith’s larger point is that, by proving Trump himself sent out the tweets, it becomes clear that some of the then-president’s actions were outside the scope of his official duties.