Left: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, in June 2024 (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right: FILE – Sidney Powell, an attorney for former President Donald Trump, leaves the federal court in Washington, June 24, 2021 (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File).
Special counsel Jack Smith’s arguments against Donald Trump’s claims of presidential immunity in the Jan. 6 case were published, to a large degree, on the public docket by the court overseeing the matter in a “voluminous” and “oversized” opening brief on Wednesday.
The filing contains a litany of new, never-before-revealed information about the behavior of the 45th president – and those in his orbit – in the days, weeks, and months following his 2020 election loss.
While the government alleges Trump and several co-conspirators spread “knowingly false claims of election fraud,” there were apparently some claims about the integrity of the election so outlandish that even Trump himself privately expressed doubts.
In one instance, those rebuffed-by-Trump claims were made during a press conference by pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell, according to the brief. Later, when speaking with others about the allegations Powell released into the public sphere, Trump ridiculed them.
On Nov. 19, 2020, Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and others presented a “Legal Challenges Update” during a flag-draped press conference in Washington, D.C., outlining several purported “paths to victory.” Those paths were premised on various kinds of litigation aimed at overturning the results in several swing states where President Joe Biden narrowly, but decisively, defeated Trump.
Giuliani was first at the dais – where he largely spread false claims about election-rigging efforts in Philadelphia and Wisconsin.
Then it was Powell’s turn.
“What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China, and the interference with our elections here in the United States,” she said. “The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes into other computerized voting systems here, as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out.”
Later that same night, Trump watched then-Fox News personality Tucker Carlson criticize Powell, who likened her legal arguments to an unleashed Kraken, for her unwillingness to back up those claims, the brief alleges. After her widely-pilloried comments about the late Venezuelan president’s alleged connection to voting machine manufacturers, Carlson’s team invited her to appear on the show.
“We would have given her the whole hour,” the then-host said. “We would have given her the entire week, actually, and listened quietly the whole time at rapt attention. But she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of polite requests. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her. When we checked with others around the Trump campaign, people in positions of authority, they also told us Powell had never given them any evidence to prove anything she claimed at the press conference.”
Later on, Trump and another person were discussing Powell’s performance during the press conference – and Carlson’s understanding of how Powell’s allegations fared.
“He acknowledged to [redacted] that [Powell] had appeared ‘unhinged’ in the press conference,” the brief reads.
The insults continued.
“On November 20, the day after the press conference, the defendant made a similar comment to [redacted] and [redacted] two White House staffers who also volunteered for his Campaign,” the brief goes on. “In casual conversation after another meeting had ended, the defendant told [the first staffer] and [the second staffer] that [Carlson] had ‘eviscerated’ or ‘destroyed’ [Powell].”
After that, Trump got onto a phone call with Powell directly, according to the brief. During the call, Trump mentioned the Fox News segment and gave Powell a chance to explain herself – putting the conversation on speakerphone so both staffers could listen along.
“While [Powell] responded, the defendant placed the call on mute and to [the first staffer] and [the second staffer] mocked and laughed at [Powell], called her claims ‘crazy,’ and made a reference to the science fiction series Star Trek when describing her allegations,” the brief says.
But it was not just Trump and Carlson who made their issues with Powell’s unsupported theories known.
Smith alleges that during “the same time period,” yet another trusted person “told” Trump that Powell’s “claims were unreliable and should not be included in lawsuits,” In response, Trump allegedly “agreed that he had not seen anything to substantiate [Powell’s] allegations.”
On Nov. 22, 2020, Giuliani issued a statement distancing the Trump campaign from Powell – insisting she was “practicing law on her own.”
Still, Powell managed to obtain the Trump imprimatur.
“Nonetheless, the defendant continued to support and publicize [Powell’s] knowingly false claims,” the brief goes on.
In the days that followed, Trump personally sent two tweets promoting Powell’s failed lawsuit alleging electoral fraud in Georgia.
And that, Smith says, is of a piece with the fundamental artifice of the alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
“The throughline of these efforts was deceit,” Smith’s brief reads.
And those efforts – derided by Smith as “lies” – were known to be lies by Trump and his co-conspirators, the brief alleges.
“At its core, the defendant’s scheme was a private criminal effort,” Smith’s brief goes on. “In his capacity as a candidate, the defendant used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”
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