(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Jack Smith's Trump Election Fraud and Capitol Attack Report, Selected Quotes [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-14

Jack Smith’s report for the D.C. case focusing on Trump’s election fraud/interference and his encouraging his supporters to overrun the Capitol is available. You can read it HERE. The point of this article is to provide a diverse array of quotes from that report with little further comment. Perhaps the most important quote appears in the picture above where Smith concludes that but for Trump’s becoming President the “evidence was sufficient to sustain a conviction at trial.” The remaining quotes will help explain that conclusion.

"I want it to be clear that the ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump was mine. It is a decision I stand behind fully. To have done otherwise on the facts developed during our work would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant."

"when it became clear that Mr.Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power . . . This included attempts to...direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters' violence to further delay it."

"In service of these efforts, Mr. Trump worked with other people to achieve a common plan...These included...a private attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud Mr. Trump privately acknowledged were 'crazy,' but which he embraced and publicly amplified nonetheless."

"The through line of all of Mr. Trump's criminal efforts was deceit-knowingly false claims of election fraud-and the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used these lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States' democratic process." "The Office investigated whether Mr. Trump believed the claims he made. Evidence from a variety of sources established that Mr. Trump knew that there was no outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election, that many of the specific claims he made were untrue, and that he had lost the election." "Mr. Trump and co-conspirators could not have believed the specific fraud claims that they were making because the numbers they touted-for instance, of dead voters in a particular state frequently vacillated wildly from day to day or were objectively impossible."

"One of Mr. Trump's efforts to change the results of the election involved targeting the electoral process at the state level through politically aligned state officials . . ." "Significantly, he made election claims only to state legislators and executives who shared his political affiliation and were his political supporters, and only in states that he had lost."

"apart from Georgia's Secretary of State, Mr. Trump never contacted other election officials to determine whether there was merit to any specific allegation of election fraud in their states-even though they would have been the best sources to confirm or refute such claims."

"the co-conspirators deceived Mr. Trump's elector nominees in the targeted states by falsely claiming that their electoral votes would be used only if ongoing litigation were resolved in Mr. Trump's favor..." "This deception was crucial to the conspiracy, as many who participated as fraudulent electors would not have done so had they known the true extent of the co-conspirators' plans."

"As his efforts to directly pressure state officials to discount legitimate votes failed and the fraudulent elector plan unfolded, Mr. Trump also tried another tack: he attempted to wield federal power to perpetuate his fraud claims and retain office."

Note: This is what actual "weaponization" of the DOJ looks like.

"Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Pence to use his ministerial position as President of the Senate to change the election outcome, often by citing false claims of election fraud as justification; he even falsely told Mr. Pence that the 'Justice Department [was] finding major infractions.'" "When Mr. Pence repeatedly refused to act as Mr. Trump wanted, Mr. Trump told him that 'hundreds of thousands' of people would 'hate his guts' and think he was 'stupid,' and that Mr. Pence was 'too honest.'"

Note: The "too honest" line is telling. How dishonest did Trump want Pence to be?

“During his speech at the Ellipse...Trump repeated many of the same lies he had been telling for month...and he told newer ones...that Mr. Pence had the authority, and might be persuaded, to change the election results." "The lie regarding Mr. Pence was particularly deceptive because Mr. Trump knew what his supporters in the crowd did not: that Mr. Pence had just told him in no uncertain terms that he would not do what Mr. Trump was demanding."

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/14/2296921/-Jack-Smith-s-Trump-Election-Fraud-and-Capitol-Attack-Report-Selected-Quotes?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/