Special prosecutor Jack Smith, who is investigating the case against Donald Trump for attempted illegal replacing the results of the 2020 election, claims in a document published today that the Republican was acting in his capacity as a candidate and therefore cannot benefit from presidential immunity, AFP reported, cited by BTA.
In a voluminous 165-page document, largely redacted to preserve the anonymity of witnesses, and presented last week to Judge Tanya Chutkan, prosecutor Smith intends to prove the private nature of the actions for which the former Republican president is being prosecuted.
In his view, these acts therefore do not fall within the scope of the broad criminal immunity for official acts granted to the President of the United States by the Supreme Court in a decision of July 1.
The document includes previously undisclosed details of the case, such as testimony from a senior White House official at the time reporting a surprising conversation between Donald Trump, his wife, daughter and son-in-law aboard the presidential helicopter.
„It doesn't matter if you win or lose the election, you have to fight tooth and nail,” Donald Trump told them, according to this testimony, which prosecutors intend to present at a future trial.
After his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden, “with the help of private accomplices, the defendant embarked on a series of increasingly desperate schemes to alter the legitimate results in seven states that had been lost by a narrow margin“, writes Jack Smith.
The culmination of these attempts was the storming of the Capitol, the sanctuary of American democracy, by hundreds of exalted supporters of Donald Trump, he recalled.
„The essence of the machination was of a private nature. He made extensive use of private individuals and his campaign headquarters structures to try to alter the results of the election and acted in a private capacity as a candidate, the special prosecutor concluded.
The former president and current Republican Party candidate responded to the publication in a series of scandalous posts on his social network “Truth Social”, calling the document "riddled with lies" and accusing the outgoing Democratic Party administration of “ ;interference in elections“.
By a majority of six votes to three, the US Supreme Court ruled that the president does not enjoy “immunity for his unofficial actions”, but he is “entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for his official actions”, according to AFP.