Remember these grotesquely iconic photos? These pics are from January 6th, 2021. Donald Trump addressing his cult members, who had been bused into DC. Trump addressed them, inciting them to stage an insurrection just minutes after he left the stage. All of those dumbf–k traitors marched, staggered, ambled and ran to the Capitol, where things quickly turned violent and dangerous. Reportedly, Trump wanted to join his cult at the Capitol, and when his Secret Service detail tried to get him out of the scene of his crime, he assaulted at least one of them. Trump eventually returned to the White House, and he spent the rest of the day watching the insurrection unfold on television. When various officials and staffers begged him to calm the situation or tell his people to stand down, he refused.

Currently, federal prosecutor Jack Smith is trying to take Trump to trial for all of the crimes he committed on and around January 6th. Smith is being blocked at every turn, mostly by the judge assigned to the case, Judge Aileen Cannon. The Supreme Court has also made it clear that they’re on Team Insurrection, probably because Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginny is the C-U-Next-Tuesday who helped organize the Stop the Steal rally on the day. SCOTUS tried to give Trump blanket immunity – under “presidential immunity” – for the crimes he committed. Cannon has also put up several roadblocks and delays as the case is being slow-walked to trial. Now Judge Chutkan has unsealed Jack Smith’s legal brief for the prosecution’s theory/narrative of Trump’s “private” crimes.

In a sprawling legal brief partly unsealed on Wednesday, the special counsel, Jack Smith, laid out his case for why former President Donald J. Trump is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. The redacted brief, made public by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, adds new details to the already extensive public record of how Mr. Trump lost the race but attempted nonetheless to cling to power.

Part of the brief focuses, for example, on a social media post that Mr. Trump sent on the afternoon of the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, telling supporters that Vice President Mike Pence had let them all down. Mr. Smith laid out extensive arguments for why that post on Twitter should be considered an unofficial act of a desperate losing candidate, rather than the official act of a president that would be considered immune from prosecution under a landmark Supreme Court ruling this summer.

After Mr. Trump’s Twitter post focused the enraged mob’s attention on harming Mr. Pence and the Secret Service took the vice president to a secure location, an aide rushed into the dining room off the Oval Office where Mr. Trump was watching television. The aide alerted him to the developing situation, in the hope that Mr. Trump would then take action to ensure Mr. Pence’s safety. Instead, Mr. Trump looked at the aide and said only, “So what?” according to grand jury testimony newly disclosed in the brief.

Much earlier, the brief says, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers gave him an “honest assessment” that his false claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud would not hold up in court. But Mr. Trump seemed not to care.

“The details don’t matter,” the brief quotes Mr. Trump as saying.

Around the same time, the brief says, Mr. Pence also sought to convince Mr. Trump he had lost the election. During a private lunch in mid-November 2020, for example, Mr. Pence suggested to Mr. Trump that he accept defeat and run again in the next presidential race, but Mr. Trump did not want to hear about it. “I don’t know,” the brief quotes him as saying, “2024 is so far-off.”

[From The NY Times]

“So what?” Yeah. I mean, Trump sent his cult to hang his vice president and they were attempting to do just that. One thing I sort of wish Jack Smith’s brief or prosecution would get into is how and why Pence didn’t want to get in the car with the Secret Service. Didn’t Pence say something like “I’m not getting in the f–king car?” A story for another day. Apparently, Trump campaign officials in Michigan desperately tried to convince Trumpers to stage a riot in Detroit (“make them riot” was the order). Jack Smith’s brief also emphasizes the lunacy of the SCOTUS presidential immunity decision, stating plainly that Trump’s actions were never that of a president, but as a private individual who was “scheming” to overturn the election and pathetically cling to power.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.