Special counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former U.S. President Donald Trump at the Justice Department on Aug. 1, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong | Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a lengthy and partly redacted motion Wednesday that charts special counsel Jack Smith’s final argument before November that former President Donald Trump acted in a private capacity when he co-conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

Much of the motion concerns Trump’s interactions with individuals in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as he sought to disrupt election results, Smith alleged.

The document, due on Chutkan’s desk late last month, is central to reanimating the case after months of delay as Trump argued for complete criminal immunity from the government’s fraud and obstruction charges related to his actions after the 2020 presidential contest, which Joe Biden won.

The U.S. Supreme Court returned Trump’s case to Chutkan after ruling that former presidents enjoy criminal immunity for core constitutional acts, presumed immunity for acts on the perimeter of official duties, and no immunity for personal ones. At that point it became clear that the case against the Republican presidential nominee would not be tried prior to Election Day.

Smith’s superseding indictment shortly thereafter retained all four felony counts against Trump, and Chutkan is tasked with parsing which allegations can stand in light of the Supreme Court decision.

In his unsealed 165-page motion, Smith outlines Trump’s alleged plots with private lawyers and political allies — names redacted — to ultimately deliver false slates of electors to Congress so that he appeared the winner over Biden in the seven 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,” Smith wrote.

Trump slammed the court filing on social media in numerous posts, writing in a mix of upper and lowercase letters that “Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris.”

“The DOJ pushed out this latest ‘hit job’ today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate. The DOJ has become nothing more than an extension of Joe’s, and now Kamala’s, Campaign. This is egregious PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, and should not have been released right before the Election,” he continued in just one of his many reactions on his platform, Truth Social.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, faced Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, in a vice presidential debate on Tuesday night.

Here are key arguments from Smith’s filing, which alleges efforts by Trump and allies to subvert voters’ will during the last presidential election:

Arizona

Smith detailed calls to and communications with various Arizona officials, including the governor and speaker of the Arizona state House, arguing the interactions were made in Trump’s “capacity as a candidate.”

• “The defendant and his co-conspirators also demonstrated their deliberate disregard for the truth — and thus their knowledge of falsity — when they repeatedly changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day. At trial, the Government will introduce several instances of this pattern, in which the defendant and conspirators’ lies were proved by the fact that they made up figures from whole cloth. One example concerns the defendant and conspirators’ claims about non-citizen voters in Arizona. The conspirators started with the allegation that 36,000 non-citizens voted in Arizona; five days later, it was ‘beyond credulity that a few hundred thousand didn’t vote’: three weeks later, ‘the bare minimum [was] 40 or 50,000. The reality is about 250,000’; days after that, the assertion was 32,000; and ultimately the conspirators landed back where they started at 36,000 — a false figure that they never verified or corroborated.”

Georgia

Smith plans to introduce into evidence Trump’s communications, in his personal capacity, with Georgia’s attorney general, including a call on Dec. 8, 2020, and to the secretary of state.

• Trump “had early notice that his claims of election fraud in Georgia were false. Around mid-November, Campaign advisor [redacted] told the defendant that his claim that a large number of dead people had voted in Georgia was false. The defendant continued to press the claim anyway, including in a press appearance on November 29, when he suggested that a large enough number of dead voters had cast ballots to change the outcome of the election in Georgia.”

• “In the post-election period, [redacted] also took on the role of updating the defendant on a near-daily basis on the Campaign’s unsuccessful efforts to support any fraud claims…. He told the defendant that if the Campaign took these claims to court, they would get slaughtered, because the claims are all ‘bullshit.’ [Redacted] was privy in real time to the findings of the two expert consulting firms the Campaign retained to investigate fraud claims — [redacted] and [redacted] — and discussed with the defendant their debunkings on all major claims. For example, [redacted] told the defendant that Georgia’s audit disproved claims that [redacted] had altered votes.”

Michigan

The document details an Oval Office meeting Trump held with Michigan’s Senate majority leader and speaker of the House on Nov. 20, 2020, during which Trump tried to acquire evidence of voter fraud in Detroit.

• “Despite failing to establish any valid fraud claims, [redacted] followed up with [redacted] and [redacted] and attempted to pressure them to use the Michigan legislature to overturn the valid election result.”

Michigan and Pennsylvania

The filing said that directly following the 2020 election, Trump and his “private operatives sought to create chaos, rather than seek clarity, at polling places where states were continuing to tabulate votes.”

• “For example, on November 4, [redacted]—a Campaign employee, agent, and co-conspirator of the defendant—tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan, looked unfavorable for the defendant.”

• “When a colleague suggested that there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers Riot, a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, [redacted] responded ‘Make them riot’ and ‘Do it!!!’ The defendant’s Campaign operatives and supporters used similar tactics at other tabulation centers, including in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the defendant sometimes used the resulting confrontations to falsely claim that his election observers were being denied proper access, thus serving as a predicate to the defendant’s claim that fraud must have occurred in the observers’ absence.”

Michigan voting machines

Smith will argue that Trump, outside his official presidential duties, tried to persuade political allies in Michigan to sway the election in his favor.

• Among the evidence he will introduce: The former president held a meeting, “private in nature,” with Michigan legislators at the White House.

• Smith also wrote that “In mid-December, the defendant spoke with RNC Chairwoman [redacted] and asked her to publicize and promote a private report that had been related on December 13 that purported to identify flaws in the use of [redacted] machines in Antrim County, Michigan. [Redacted] refused, telling the defendant that she already had discussed this report with [redacted] Michigan’s Speaker of the House, who had told her that the report was inaccurate. [Redacted] conveyed to the defendant [redacted] exact assessment: the report was ‘f—— nuts.’”

Nevada

In Nevada, Trump allegedly ignored warnings about spreading lies about the state’s election results. Smith wrote: “Notwithstanding the RNC Chief Counsel’s warning, the defendant re-tweeted and amplified news of the lawsuit on November 24, calling it ‘Big News!’ that a Nevada Court had agreed to hear it. But the defendant did not similarly promote the fact that within two weeks, on December 4, the Nevada District Court dismissed Law v. Whitmer, finding in a detailed opinion that ‘there is no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 General Election in Nevada was affected by fraud,’ including through the signature-match machines, and that Biden won the election in the state.”

• Trump continued to repeat false claims in tweets and speeches “as a candidate, not as an office holder,” Smith wrote.

Pennsylvania 

In the Keystone State, officials warned Trump there was no smoke and no fire related to election fraud in the commonwealth, Smith wrote.

• “Two days after the election, on November 6, the defendant called [redacted], the Chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party—the entity responsible for supporting Republican candidates in the commonwealth at the federal, state and local level. [Redacted] had a prior relationship with the defendant, including having represented him in litigation in Pennsylvania after the 2016 presidential election. The defendant asked [redacted] how, without fraud, he had gone from winning Pennsylvania on election day to trailing in the day afterward. Consistent with what Campaign staff already had told the defendant, [redacted] confirmed that it was not fraud; it was that there were roughly 1,750,000 mail-in ballots still being counted in Pennsylvania, which were expected to be eighty percent for Biden. Over the following two months, the defendant spread false claims of fraud in Pennsylvania anyway.”

• “In early November, in a Campaign meeting, when the defendant suggested that more people in Pennsylvania voted than had checked in to vote, Deputy Campaign Manager [redacted] corrected him.”

Wisconsin

Smith wrote Trump ignored reality in Wisconsin as well.

• “On November 29, a recount that the defendant’s campaign had petitioned and paid for confirmed that Biden had won in Wisconsin — and increased the defendant’s margin of defeat. On December 14, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the Campaign’s election lawsuit there. As a result, on December 21, Wisconsin’s Governor signed a certificate of final determination confirming the prior certificate of ascertainment that established Biden’s electors as the valid electors for the state.”

Trump responded by rebuking the Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who had signed the majority opinion that rejected the lawsuit, forcing the state marshals responsible for the judge’s security to enhance protection due to a rise in “threatening communications.”

Fake electors 

Smith alleged that as Trump and co-conspirators faltered at overturning states’ official election results, they turned their attention to fake slates of electors.

As early as December 2020, Trump and his allies “developed a new plan regarding targeted states that the defendant had lost (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin): to organize the people who would have served as the defendant’s electors had he won the popular vote, and cause them to sign and send to Pence, as President of the Senate, certificates in which they falsely represent themselves as legitimate electors who had cast electoral votes for the defendant,” Smith wrote.

Trump and his allies lied to Vice President Mike Pence heading toward Jan. 6, “telling him that there was substantial election fraud and concealing their orchestration of the plan to manufacture fraudulent elector slates, as well as their intention to use the fake slates to attempt to obstruct the congressional certification.”

Trump’s alleged lies to Pence and the public “created a tinderbox that he purposely ignited on January 6.”

The filing details numerous people, including Trump, pressuring Pence for weeks to use his role overseeing Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote to overturn the election results.

On the morning of Jan. 6, Pence, once again, told Trump he would not go along with the plan.

“So on January 6, the defendant sent to the Capitol a crowd of angry supporters, whom the defendant had called to the city and inundated with false claims of outcome-determinative election fraud, to induce Pence not to certify the legitimate electoral vote and to obstruct the certification.”

“Although the attack on the Capitol successfully delayed the certification for approximately six hours, the House and Senate resumed the Joint Session at 11:35 p.m. But the conspirators were not done.”

The filing alleges a co-conspirator once again urged Pence to “violate the law” by delaying the certification for 10 days. He refused.

Pressure on Pence

Smith must prove that Trump’s pressure on Pence was outside of their official duties together, and therefore can not be considered immune from prosecution.

Smith plans to introduce evidence of private phone calls and conversations between Trump and his VP, including some with campaign staff, essentially tying their interactions to their interests as those seeking office again, “as running mates in the post-election period.” Smith also plans to highlight that Pence’s role in certifying the election was largely ceremonial and within the realm of the Senate, and strictly outside the bounds of the Oval Office.  Among Smith’s points made in his motion:

• “Because the Vice President’s role is and has always been ministerial, rather than substantive or discretionary, it is difficult to imagine an occasion in which a President would have any valid reason to try to influence it. As such, criminalizing a President’s efforts to affect the Vice President’s role as the President of the Senate overseeing the certification of Electoral College results would not jeopardize an Executive Branch function or authority.”

Liberal justices who control the Wisconsin Supreme Court voiced concerns Tuesday about the motives of a conservative activist who is seeking guardianship records in an effort to find ineligible voters while also appearing to cast doubt that the documents should be made public.

The lawsuit tests the line between protecting personal privacy rights and ensuring that ineligible people can’t vote. It is the latest attempt by those who questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential race to cast doubt on the integrity of elections in the presidential swing state.

“What it sounds to me like what you are trying to do is to introduce the fear that there is some sort of illegitimacy going on in the election in the state of Wisconsin, and that concerns me deeply,” said liberal Justice Jill Karofsky during oral arguments Tuesday.

Former travel agent Ron Heuer and a group he leads, Wisconsin Voter Alliance, allege that the number of ineligible voters doesn’t match the count on Wisconsin’s voter registration list. They want the state Supreme Court to rule that counties must release records filed when a judge determines that someone isn’t competent to vote so that those names can be compared to the voter registration list.

“What we want is eligible people to vote and people who are adjudicated by a circuit court judge ineligible to vote not to vote,” said Erick Kaardal, attorney for Heuer and the WVA.

There are ways for the government, not a private watchdog group, to review the records confidentially and determine if someone is voting illegally, said attorney Sam Hall, who represented Walworth County in Tuesday’s case.

Heuer and the WVA filed lawsuits in 13 counties in 2022 seeking guardianship records.

A state appeals court in 2023 overturned a circuit court ruling dismissing the case and found that the records are public. It ordered Walworth County to release them with birthdates and case numbers redacted. The ruling from the conservative 2nd District Court of Appeals contradicted a prior binding decision from the liberal 4th District Court of Appeals, which had dismissed the case.

The county appealed to the state Supreme Court, which heard arguments Tuesday. Its ruling is unlikely to come before the November election.

Hall said the appeals court ruling “blasts open the door for the personal information of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities to be broadcast, not only to those with noble and good intentions but to those who might do these folks harm.”

He urged the court to issue a ruling directly addressing the merits of the case, not a technical legal issue.

“I don’t think this issue is going away,” Hall said.

He also argued that the law is clear about who has access to the guardianship records, and the WVA did not demonstrate a need.

Kaardal argued that the records should be made public to root out people who are still on the voter rolls after being found ineligible to vote.

But the liberal justices questioned whether the law allows for the records to be made public. Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley asked if there was a way to perform an audit and ensure that government officials are removing people from the voting rolls when a court has determined they lost that right.

Liberal Justice Rebecca Dallet stressed that there was no proof in the court record that a person ruled incompetent had voted illegally or been sent a ballot illegally or that the state elections commission had done anything wrong. Wisconsin Watch reported last year based on records provided by the Dane County clerk that adjudicated incompetent people have voted in past elections, though not in numbers that would affect the outcome of any election.

Heuer and the WVA have pushed inflated estimates about the 2020 election in an attempt to cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s win in Wisconsin. Heuer was hired as an investigator in the discredited 2020 election probe led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman that found no evidence of fraud or abuse that would have changed the election results.

The WVA also filed two unsuccessful lawsuits that sought to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin.

Biden defeated Donald Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and the recounts Trump requested.

Court weighs Racine mobile voting van case

The Wisconsin Supreme Court also wrestled Tuesday with whether a Republican had standing to bring a lawsuit that challenges the use of a mobile voting van in 2022 and seeks to ban its use in any future election in the presidential battleground state.

Such vans — a single van, actually — were used just once, in Racine in a primary election in 2022. It allowed voters to cast absentee ballots in the two weeks leading up to the election. Racine, the Democratic National Committee and others say nothing in state law prohibits the use of voting vans.

Whatever the court decides will not affect the November election, as a ruling isn’t expected until later and no towns or cities asked to use alternative voting locations for this election before the deadline to do so passed. But the ruling will determine whether mobile voting sites can be used in future elections.

Much of the oral argument Tuesday focused on whether the Racine County voter who brought the lawsuit was “aggrieved” under state law and allowed to sue. If the court rules that he didn’t have standing, it could make it more difficult to bring future lawsuits challenging election laws.

Karofsky said she had a hard time seeing how the voter who brought the lawsuit, Racine County Republican Party Chairman Ken Brown, had been injured by simply witnessing use of the mobile voting van.

The law allows Brown, as a voter, to file a complaint because he believed an election official was breaking the law, said Lucas Vebber, attorney for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which represented Brown. Vebber argued that voters can bring an election lawsuit in their local jurisdiction.

But Gabe Johnson-Karp, representing the Wisconsin Elections Commission, argued that the voter in this case wasn’t personally injured and therefore can’t bring a lawsuit. He can’t bring a lawsuit making a “generalized grievance about too many people voting or the election officials not following the law,” Johnson-Karp argued.

Liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley asked if the court would have to consider other issues in the case if it determines Brown did not have standing.

Vebber said he didn’t know if the court could, but if it did, “I think it would be beneficial to the voters of Wisconsin and to the government entities to resolve these issues.”

Republicans argue it is against state law to operate mobile voting sites, that their repeated use would increase the chances of voter fraud, and that the one in Racine was used to bolster Democratic turnout.

Wisconsin law prohibits locating any early voting site in a place that gives an advantage to any political party. There are other limitations on early voting sites, including a requirement that they be “as near as practicable” to the clerk’s office.

For the 2022 election, Racine city Clerk Tara McMenamin and the city had a goal of making voting as accessible to as many voters as possible.

Racine purchased its van with grant money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. Republicans have been critical of the grants, calling the money “Zuckerbucks” that they say was used to tilt turnout in Democratic areas.

Wisconsin voters in April approved a constitutional amendment banning the use of private money to help run elections.

The van was used only to facilitate early in-person voting during the two weeks prior to an election, McMenamin said. It traveled for two weeks across the city, allowing voters to cast in-person absentee ballots in 21 locations.

Brown filed a complaint the day after the August 2022 primary with the Wisconsin Elections Commission, arguing that the van was against state law. He argued that it was only sent to Democratic areas in the city in an illegal move to bolster turnout.

McMenamin disputed those accusations, saying that it shows a misunderstanding of the city’s voting wards, which traditionally lean Democratic.

Liberal justices appeared wary of accepting the argument that the van improperly favored Democrats.

The elections commission dismissed the complaint four days before the 2022 election, saying there was no probable cause shown to believe the law had been broken. Brown sued.

Brown sued, and in January, a Racine County Circuit Court judge sided with Republicans, ruling that state election laws do not allow for the use of mobile voting sites.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court in June kept that ruling in place pending its consideration of the case, which effectively meant the use of mobile voting sites would not be allowed in the upcoming presidential election. The court also kept in place the same rules that have been in place since 2016 for determining the location of early voting sites. The deadline for selecting those sites for use in the November election was in June.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Wisconsin Supreme Court justices question merits of case brought by election activist is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.