Shock Doc Drop: Trump Odds Still -110 Following October Surprise

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” after losing the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said in a court filing unsealed Wednesday.  Government's Motion for Immunity Determinations can be read in full here.

The filing was submitted by special counsel Jack Smith’s team following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, narrowing the scope of the prosecution charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

The purpose of the brief is to convince U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offenses charged in the indictment are private, rather than official, acts and can therefore remain part of the indictment as the case moves forward.

”At its core, the defendant’s scheme was a private one,” prosecutors wrote in the motion. “He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”

“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team said, adding, “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”

Those include efforts to persuade then Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the counting of the electoral votes on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021.

Details within the filing include conversations between Trump and Pence including one in which the latter “reiterated a face-saving option” for Trump, telling him, “don’t concede but recognize the process is over,” according to prosecutors.

In another private lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024.

“I don’t know, 2024 is so far off,” Trump told him, according to the filing.

But Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states — including those in his own party — who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false,” prosecutors wrote.

Trump’s “steady stream of disinformation” in the weeks after the election culminated in his speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, in which Trump “used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding,” prosecutors wrote.

Odds on Trump and Harris were still at -110 as of 4:49 pm EDT at BetOnline.

Trump Sought to ‘Perpetuate Himself in Power’

From CNN:

Smith’s office stressed the private and political nature of Trump’s actions around the 2020 election.

“The executive branch,” prosecutors wrote, “has no authority or function to choose the next president.”

That argument appeared designed for federal appeals courts, including the Supreme Court, that have placed a heavy emphasis in recent years on the historical understanding of the separation of powers.

In other words, Smith is arguing that Trump’s effort to overturn the election was necessarily private because the Constitution gives a president no official authority for choosing his successor.

“The defendant’s charged conduct directly contravenes these foundational principles,” the motion reads. “He sought to encroach on powers specifically assigned by the Constitution to other branches, to advance his own self-interest and perpetuate himself in power, contrary to the will of the people.”