Donald Trump bears responsibility for Jan. 6 attack, Jack Smith argues in new filing

WASHINGTON — A team of federal prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith said in a filing Wednesday that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump bears responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In a filing responding to Trump’s attempt to dismiss the case, Smith’s team said it “is incorrect” for Trump’s team to assert that the superseding indictment returned against Trump in August does not show that Trump bears responsibility for the events of Jan. 6.

Trump, Smith’s team said, “willfully caused others” to obstruct the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory by repeating his false claims of election fraud and giving “false hope” to his supporters who believed that then-Vice President Mike Pence might overturn the election, and by “pressuring” Pence and legislators to accept fraudulent certificates as part of the fake electors scheme.

“Those allegations link the defendant’s actions on January 6 directly to his efforts to corruptly obstruct the certification proceeding,” Smith’s team wrote.

“Contrary to the defendant’s claim … that he bears no factual or legal responsibility for the ‘events on January 6,’ the superseding indictment plainly alleges that the defendant willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceeding by summoning them to Washington, D.C., and then directing them to march to the Capitol to pressure the Vice President and legislators to reject the legitimate certificates and instead rely on the fraudulent electoral certificates,” Smith’s team wrote.

Trump’s lawyers previously argued the indictment “stretches generally applicable statutes beyond their breaking point based on false claims that President Trump is somehow responsible for events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021,” and sought to “assign blame for events President Trump did not control and took action to protect against.”

The indictment alleged that Trump exploited the violence and chaos at the Capitol, and in a recent filing Smith’s team said that Trump — when he heard that Pence had to be rushed to a secure location shortly after Trump attacked him on Twitter — responded by saying, “So what?”

Smith and Trump’s lawyers have continued to exchange legal filings in the case with less than three weeks left until Election Day, when Trump will hope to return to power after his 2020 loss. He has denied wrongdoing in the case and asserted the indictment was politically fueled.

The latest filing comes after the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity gutted part of Smith’s case against Trump. The superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury alleged that Trump knowingly spread lies about the 2020 election that were “unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing” in his bid to overturn his loss and remain in power.

Smith’s team said Trump’s dismissal filing “fails to identify any pleading flaw in the superseding indictment warranting its dismissal” and his motion “ignores entirely that the case against him includes allegations that he and his co-conspirators sought to create and use false evidence — fraudulent electoral certificates — as a means of obstructing the certification proceeding.”

Smith’s team said in a filing earlier this month that Trump “resorted to crimes” to stay in office after his loss and that he was fundamentally acting as a private candidate for office, not as president, when he engaged in much of the conduct at the heart of their case.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, gave Trump’s team an extension that moved the due date of a filing until after the election. Trump’s motion to dismiss based on his claims of presidential immunity is now due Nov. 7, while the government’s reply is due on Nov. 21. Whether the case ultimately goes to trial depends on the outcome of the election.