Special counsel Jack Smith's new massive filing in the Trump federal election conspiracy case is hugely consequential, voting rights attorney Marc Elias told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday.
In particular, said Elias, Smith has detailed evidence that Trump knew he lost — and kept trying to overturn the election and stay in power anyway.
"I think this is a blockbuster document, but one sentence encapsulates it all," said Elias. "Donald Trump told his family, 'It didn't matter if you won or lost the election, you still have to fight like hell.' He knew he lost. He put the nation through 60-plus lawsuits. When that failed, he organized an insurrection of the nation's Capitol. This man should not be anywhere near the Oval Office."
Another "important point," Elias told Wallace, is that the timeline Smith lays out shows Trump was orchestrating the whole plot to overturn the election, in ways that had nothing to do with official actions — the distinction the Supreme Court said determines immunity.
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"If you go back to a much more mundane part of the post-election, or at the time seemed mundane, Donald Trump wound up placing a call to the state canvassing board members for Wayne County, Michigan," said Elias. "It was kind of an odd thing at the time that you had the President of the United States calling two local canvass board members with the RNC chairwoman trying to pressure them not to certify Detroit."
And this, ultimately, led to Trump's infamous phone call to Georgia's Republican secretary of state demanding he "find" extra votes.
"We know now he was hands-on in almost every stage of this post-election process for almost everything we are aware of that was done wrong," said Elias. "He is hands-on in trying to pressure Mike Pence. He is hands-on in trying to pressure or to build this January 6th insurrection rally effort. He was involved because he did not want to lose power, and I think a lot of the people around him knew he lost, and others knew he had lost, but were willing to humor him, but was the only one spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every moment, trying to figure out a way around leaving office."
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