A crucial part of Smith’s indictment comes on page 8, regarding Trump’s claims about the 2020 election: “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. In fact, the Defendant was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue.”
MSNBC’s Ari Melber called this passage the “core” of the charges on Tuesday. And indeed, the indictment cites numerous instances where Trump allegedly made “knowingly false statements” even after those “best positioned to know the facts” in his inner circle told him he was lying. According to the indictment:
- Vice President Mike Pence “told the Defendant that he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud.”
- Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe “disabused the Defendant of the notion that the Intelligence Community’s findings regarding foreign interference would change the outcome of the election.”
- “Senior White House attorneys — selected by the defendant to provide him candid advice — informed the Defendant that there was no evidence of outcome-determinative election fraud.”
- Trump “insinuated that more than ten thousand dead voters had voted in Georgia” four days after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told him that was false.
- Trump “asserted that there had been 205,000 more votes than voters in Pennsylvania” after both Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue told him that was false.
- On the eve of Jan. 6, Trump “approved and caused his campaign” to claim that Pence believed he could intervene in the certification of the electoral college. Only hours earlier, Pence had told him he couldn’t.
Many of these instances have been previously reported, but seeing them laid out back-to-back like this in a federal indictment is a remarkable catalog of the breadth of Trump’s deception.
