The government took another major stab at trying to indict former President Trump for his role in overturning the 2020 election. The document lays out exactly how the government will prosecute President Trump if a judge allows them to move forward.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that much of the president’s acts were protected under the role of his office. Special Counsel Jack Smith now tries to delineate acts that they claim were done on a personal capacity so that they can prosecute those separately.
Could this be damning to the President? Surely it could if U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan accepts this new distinction in order to let the case move forward on this basis. But what about the fact that a court has separately ruled that Special Counsel Smith was unconstitutionally appointed in the first place? How can he still be working in this capacity when a judge ruled that his role “violates the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution”?
Trump’s legal team argued that publicly releasing this document in the weeks before the election would influence the election. Will it?
