🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Donald Trump is using "rank speculation" and "conspiratorial narratives" to try to escape from his election-tampering case, the chief prosecutor in the investigation has complained.
In a filing to a Washington D.C. court on Monday, Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith strongly rejected Trump's motion to dismiss the case based on "selective and vindictive prosecution," in a rebuttal that lasts nearly 80 pages.
Smith accused Trump of justifying the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol building, when pro-Trump protesters tried to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
"Publicly, the defendant has promoted and extolled the events of that day," Smith complained in his submission. "While the violent attack was ongoing, the defendant told rioters that they were 'very special'."
"Evidence of the attack at the Capitol on January 6 is powerful and probative evidence of the defendant's conduct, motive, and intent," Smith added. "As the attack on the Capitol halted the congressional certification for several hours.. defendant & his co-conspirators sought to exploit the delay to further obstruct the proceeding."
Smith also noted that Trump has been praising a choir made up of people accused of crimes during the January 6 riot. The group recently sang a version of the National Anthem at a Texas political rally while Trump saluted the flag.
"Of the January 6 Choir, the defendant told the crowd, '[O]ur people love those people, they love those people'," Smith noted.
"In the years since January 6, despite his knowledge of the violent actions at the Capitol, the defendant has publicly praised and defended rioters and their conduct," Smith added. "No other president has engaged in conspiracy and obstruction to overturn valid election results and illegitimately retain power. The indictment squarely charges the defendant for this conduct, and the defendant's constitutional and statutory challenges to it are meritless."
He strongly rejected a claim by Trump's lawyers that Trump's statements on the 2020 election were free speech protected by the First Amendment.
"Any speech that the defendant used to carry out the conspiracy, fraud, and obstruction crimes charged in the indictment is categorically excluded from the protections of the First Amendment," Smith wrote.
He was responding to a set of motions filed by Trump's legal team in a D.C. district court on October 23 in which they requested that Judge Tanya Chutkan dismiss the four federal election tampering charges, based on grounds of "vindictive prosecution."
In the motion, Trump claims that government prosecutors "behaved in a discriminatory and unconstitutionally selective fashion" and are trying to override his "protected speech." The motion also states that the prosecution is "driven by an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose" and claims it advances President Joe Biden's "publicly stated objective to use the criminal justice system to incapacitate [Trump], his main political rival and the leading candidate in the upcoming election."
The motion asserts that Trump's prosecution is vindictive, characterizing it as a "straightforward retaliatory response" to the former president "exercising his constitutional rights to free speech and to petition for the redress of grievances, and his decision to run for political office."
The charges Trump faces in Washington D.C. include conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct Congress' certification of Biden's 2020 election victory. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In Monday's submission, Smith said the prosecution was based on fact, not "animus" directed at Trump.
"This prosecution stands upon the bedrock principle of equal justice under law. The defendant's sweeping claims of selective and vindictive prosecution are unsupported by any evidence and lack any merit," he wrote. He suggested that Trump's real motive was to delay the trial.
"The defendant has an established record of attempting to disrupt and delay the Court's carefully considered trial date and pretrial schedule. Now, the defendant has timed his motion to stay these proceedings for maximum disruptive effect," Smith wrote.
Judge Chutkan has yet to rule on Trump's motion and the case is set to go to trial in March.
About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more