Although special counsel Jack Smith did not charge former President Donald Trump directly with inciting the Jan. 6 riots at the United States Capitol, a new court filing shows that the special counsel's team is preparing to use the riot as a central part of its case that Trump corruptly tried to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election.
As reported by Politico, the new filing written by senior assistant special counsel Molly Gaston argues that Trump's incitement of the mob was part of a last-ditch effort to intimidate members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify President Joe Biden's victory.
“[T]he defendant here is charged with four related criminal counts, including conspiring to obstruct and obstructing the official certification proceeding on January 6,” Gaston wrote. “Essential to those charges are factual allegations and evidence that the proceeding was in fact impeded — namely, by a large crowd, including individuals whom the defendant had directed at the Capitol, that violently advanced on the Capitol building to create ‘a catastrophic security risk.’”
Tim Heaphy, the former chief investigative counsel for the House Select Committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol, told Politico that it seems Smith and his team have adopted claims made in the committee's final report that the riots were "the logical last step of an increasingly desperate conspiracy" to stop the election from being certified.
Prior to the riots, Trump had also called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to "find" 12,000 votes needed for him to win, and he also pressured his own Department of Justice to simply declare the 2020 presidential election "corrupt."
And of course, Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to singlehandedly refuse to certify the results -- and when Pence refused to do so, pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol chanted for Pence to be hanged.
