U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan released a 165-page court document Wednesday afternoon filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
In it, Smith claims former President Donald Trump committed a number of crimes as a candidate on January 6, 2021 to stay in power after the 2020 presidential election. The new language and framing is an effort by federal prosecutors to get around the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling in June.
"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. Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one," the document states. "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."
The filing is a rewrite of Smith's original January 6 case against Trump, which was forced by the Supreme Court decision on immunity.
"In Trump v. United States, 144 S. Ct. 2312 (2024), 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," the document continues. "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."
Prior to getting assigned the Trump case, Judge Chutkan opined that the former President should be imprisoned.
The Trump campaign is slamming the argument as "falsehood ridden" and election interference.
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