Federal prosecutors prosecuting Donald Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election said Tuesday they plan to present evidence they say shows the former U.S. president was determined “at all costs.” to stay in power.”
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In a court document, the services of special counsel Jack Smith emphasize that the Republican repeatedly refused to promise a peaceful transition in the event of a defeat by Joe Biden.
Prosecutors “will present evidence that this refusal in itself proves the defendant’s criminal conspiracy because it reveals his plan to remain in power at all costs, even in the face of the threat of violence,” prosecutors say.
Donald Trump was federally indicted in August over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The 77-year-old billionaire baselessly claimed that he won the vote at the expense of Joe Biden.
His trial in the case is scheduled to open on March 4, 2024, a key period in the primary campaign for the Republican presidential nomination that same year, for which he is the heavy favorite in the polls.
The business tycoon’s lawyers have repeatedly tried to delay the opening of this trial beyond the November 2024 elections. Among other things, they argue that their client enjoys “absolute immunity” for acts committed during his term as president.
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strategy
In the court document released Tuesday, prosecutors laid out some of the strategy and evidence they plan to use in this unprecedented trial of a former president.
Prosecutors will present “a series of public statements” from Donald Trump in which he warned that “fraud would occur in the 2020 presidential election,” it said.
“These statements fueled distrust in the results of the presidential election and served as the basis for the defendant’s criminal efforts,” the indictment adds.
The claims include a November 2012 tweet in which Donald Trump made “baseless claims” that voting machines had shifted votes from then-Republican candidate Mitt Romney to Democratic incumbent Barack Obama.
During his 2016 presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton, the real estate mogul also “repeatedly and baselessly claimed that there was widespread voter fraud,” prosecutors continue.
According to them, these false claims “illustrate Donald Trump’s motive, intent and plan to obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 election and to unlawfully maintain himself in power.”
Prosecutors also linked these attempts to overturn the election results to the day of January 6, 2021, when hundreds of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington to prevent the formalization of Joe Biden’s victory.
“The defendant openly and proudly supported these people,” including “by suggesting that he would pardon them if he were re-elected,” the accusation underlines.
“Divine Right of Kings”
The argument of Donald Trump’s alleged immunity was brushed aside last week by the judge overseeing the trial.
“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, there is only one person at the head of the executive branch in the United States at a time, and that role does not confer a lifetime ‘get out of jail’ card,” she says.
Donald Trump’s presidential mandate does not grant him “the divine right of kings to evade justice,” the judge added.
The trial in this case is just one of the legal problems facing the former president.
At the beginning of June, federal charges against Donald Trump were filed in Florida, a first for a former American president. He is accused of endangering the security of the United States by storing classified documents at his Florida residence after leaving the White House in January 2021 instead of turning them over to the National Archives as required by law.
Donald Trump describes his legal problems as “election interference” at the behest of the Democratic administration in order to exclude him from the race for the White House.