Trump Campaign ‘Encouraged Rioting’ After 2020 Election, DOJ Plans To Argue At Election Trial

Topline

Justice Department prosecutors will introduce evidence at former President Donald Trump’s upcoming trial over the 2020 election alleging his campaign “encouraged rioting” to stop the vote count in Michigan, prosecutors said in a filing Tuesday, as the DOJ outlined some of the evidence it plans to use to prove Trump illegally tried to overturn his election loss.

Then-President Donald Trump arrives to speak to supporters from The Ellipse near the White House on … [+] January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC.

AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who’s leading the DOJ’s investigation, submitted a court filing Tuesday noting evidence prosecutors plan to use at the March 2024 trial that will help to “establish [Trump’s motive, intent, preparation, knowledge, absence of mistake, and common plan.”

While the indictment already alleges Trump and his allies unlawfully pressured state officials to change the election results, prosecutors also plan to introduce text messages between a Trump campaign staffer and a campaign attorney who was at a vote counting site in Detroit, in which the campaign employee allegedly “encouraged rioting and other methods of obstruction when he learned that the vote count was trending in favor of [President Joe Biden]

.”

Prosecutors will also show evidence that “around the time” of those text messages, “as Biden began to take the lead, a large number of untrained individuals flooded the [vote counting center] and began making illegitimate and aggressive challenges to the vote count.”

While Trump then used those challenges to the vote count to make “repeated false claims regarding election activities” in Detroit, prosecutors allege that “in truth his agent was seeking to cause a riot to disrupt the count.”

Prosecutors also plan to introduce evidence from the years before and after the 2020 election, such as statements that Trump made claiming election fraud after previous elections in 2012 and 2016, which prosecutors argue demonstrates Trump’s “common plan of falsely blaming fraud for election results he does not like.”

Other evidence prosecutors plan to use at trial includes Trump refusing to commit to accepting the election results before elections in 2016 and 2020, his statements in support of Jan. 6 rioters and “encouragement of violence,” and alleged efforts by Trump and an unnamed co-conspirator — believed to be Rudy Giuliani — to “retaliate” against the Republican National Committee’s then-chief counsel because the attorney publicly refuted Trump’s election fraud claims.

Chief Critic

“Crooked Joe Biden, Deranged Jack Smith, and the rest of the Hacks and Thugs attempting to interfere in the 2024 election are getting so desperate to attack President Trump that they are perverting justice by trying to include claims that weren’t anywhere to be found in their dreamt up, fake indictment,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Forbes in a statement Tuesday about the court filing. “President Trump will not be deterred and will continue speaking truth to corrupt, weaponized power and law enforcement.”

Crucial Quote

The alleged text messages between the campaign staffer and attorney “demonstrate that [Trump], his co-conspirators, and agents had knowledge that [Trump] had lost the election, as well as their intent and motive to obstruct and overturn the legitimate results,” prosecutors argued in the court filing.

What To Watch For

The federal election case against Trump is expected to go to trial in March 2024, with NBC News reporting Monday that prospective jurors have already started receiving pre-screening forms asking for their availability. Trump faces four felony charges in the federal election case for conspiracy and obstruction, which could result in prison time if he’s convicted. The former president has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and has sought to have the indictment dismissed, which U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected last week. It’s likely Trump could appeal that order, including to the Supreme Court.

Key Background

The federal election case is one of four criminal cases against Trump and one of two involving the 2020 election, along with a state case brought in Fulton County, Georgia. The DOJ indicted Trump in August following a yearslong investigation that first focused on the Jan. 6 riot, before expanding in 2022 to include the former president’s post-election efforts. Prosecutors allege Trump and his allies’ wide-ranging plot to overturn the election violated federal law, pointing to such activities as pressuring state officials and legislators, using the DOJ to challenge the results and trying to stop Congress from certifying the vote on Jan. 6, including by pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject the results and through a “fake electors” scheme in which GOP officials submitted false slates of electors to Congress. (While the indictment details activities by Trump’s “co-conspirators,” only the ex-president has been charged in the case.) In her ruling Friday rejecting Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment — which argued he had “immunity” from the charges because he was president at the time — Chutkan argued Trump’s presidency did not give him the “divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”