Newly unsealed, redacted court filings from special counsel Jack Smith reveal that former Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly tried to get former President Trump to accept his loss following the 2020 presidential election.
Smith’s lengthy motion detailing how former President Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” as he attempted to discredit the results of the 2020 election was finally unsealed by a judge on Wednesday.
A sampling of the pleas and persuasions Pence made to Trump to get him to acknowledge the truth of his election loss, from Jack Smith’s new motion pic.twitter.com/06ZRDdkkHG
— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 2, 2024
“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” states the motion. “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.”
The filings cite a number of instances in which Pence repeatedly pleaded with Trump, begging him to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election. Some of the instances include accounts of Pence telling Trump “don’t concede but recognize process is over” and encouraging him to accept defeat and run again in 2024, to which Trump allegedly responded saying “I don’t know, 2024 is so far off.”
Smith argues that Trump acted in a private capacity, as a candidate, during his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, instead of in an official, public capacity as the incumbent president. This is in response to the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year in which the nation’s highest court ruled that sitting Presidents have immunity for “official acts.”
“Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends … That is the majority’s message today,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent.
“The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law,” she continued.
Last month, Trump pleaded not guilty to revised federal charges alleging that he attempted to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
