Donald Trump has accused Kamala Harris of trying to subvert the presidential election, after damning court documents were released just a month before polling day.
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Donald Trump in Milwaukee on Oct 1 Getty/Jim Watson
Key moments
3 October 2024 • 12:18am
10:52pm - ‘Win or lose - you fight like hell’
10:34pm - Read the new Trump court documents in full
10:03pm - Trump ‘said ‘so what’ as Pence was rushed to safety’
9:44pm - Pence encouraged Trump to accept defeat
9:37pm - ‘He’s just going to say that he’s the winner’
Donald Trump has accused Kamala Harris of trying to subvert the presidential election, after damning court documents were released just a month before polling day.
The former president has been charged with trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election, and the newly unsealed 165-page filing is the prosecution’s case against him.
Among the claims made in the document are that Trump planned to “declare himself a winner” in the 2020 election before ballots were counted, and that he responded “so what” when he was told that Mike Pence, his vice president, was rushed to safety as the Capitol was stormed by rioters.
The timing of the release prompted a furious response from Trump on Wednesday night.
He said: “The release of this falsehood-ridden, unconstitutional, Jan 6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the most important election in the history of our country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and weaponise American democracy, and interfere in the 2024 presidential election”
Mr Walz, Ms Harris’s running mate took on his Republican counterpart, JD Vance in a CBS vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night. Mr Vance was widely deemed the winner.
Trump went on to say that Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by the justice department in November 2022 to lead the prosecution and investigation into him, was deranged and “hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department.”
The former president was indicted by a grand jury on four charges related to his alleged effort to subvert the 2020 election, but his trial was derailed over a dispute about whether he enjoyed immunity from prosecution while in office.
Mr Smith’s motion argues that Trump’s election meddling efforts were undertaken in a “private” capacity, and therefore not exempt from prosecution.
Typically, such a motion would follow a filing by the defence. However, in a move described as unusual by legal experts, the presiding judge allowed Mr Smith’s team to pre-empt Trump’s motion, allowing Mr Smith to outline his case just over a month before the US election.
Read it in full here, or scroll down further for latest updates.
DocumentCloud
Benedict Smith Joe Barnes Brussels Correspondent.
Susie Coen US Correspondent.
Rozina Sabur Deputy US Editor
3 October 2024 • 12:49am
12:18AM
That’s all for now
Thanks for following our live coverage of the bombshell court documents that were released in Donald Trump’s election interference case. This live blog is now closed.
12:01AM
Timing of new documents ‘could have been better’
A former lawyer for Donald Trump said the timing of the new court filing “could be better” given the fact that the election is just weeks away.
Timothy Parlatore, who worked for the former president while he was the subject of a probe into his “election interference” case, told CNN: “The timing could be better, you know, for appearance’s purposes.
“They asked for a briefing schedule that this was filed a few weeks ago, and then it took a few weeks for it to be unsealed. It’s very detailed.
“Donald Trump’s response isn’t going to be for another couple of weeks... we’re unlikely to be able to see his response to this until after the election.”
He continued: “People are reading this in the context of an election, not just in the context of criminal proceedings.”
11:07PM
‘People will hate your guts,’ Trump warned Pence
On New Year’s day in 2021, Trump warned Mike Pence that people would “hate your guts” and “think you’re stupid” if his vice president did not intervene in Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory, according to the filing.
11:04PM
Trump claims Democrats have ‘weaponised the justice department’
Donald Trump has fired out a barrage of Truth Social posts after new documents in his “election interference” case were made public.
10:56PM
The ‘dogged prosecutor’ pursuing Donald Trump
Jack Smith has a reputation as a dogged prosecutor. In his appointment as an independent special counsel, he has proved his determination to pursue his case against Donald Trump.
The 165-page brief, filed last week but only publicly revealed today, is most likely Mr Smith’s final opportunity to detail his case against Trump before the election.
There will not be a trial anytime soon - or perhaps ever, if Trump returns to the White House. The Justice Department’s long-standing policy is that sitting presidents cannot face prosecution.
10:52PM
‘Win or lose - you fight like hell’
Donald Trump said he would “fight like hell” to stay in power whether he won or lost the 2020 presidential election, according to the new documents.
According to a White House staffer travelling with Trump, some time after he began “spreading false fraud claims”, he told family members: “It doesn’t mater if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”
Prosecutors cite it as one of a number of pieces of evidence that show that the former president knew the claims he was making about the election being “stolen” were untrue.
10:37PM
Trump hits out at Kamala Harris and ‘Deranged Jack Smith’
10:34PM
Read the new Trump court documents in full
10:32PM
Trump staffer: Fraud claims were ‘bulls---’
Trump’s White House staffer told the then-president they could “find no support” for his election fraud claims because they were all “bulls---”.
The employee, who is referred to as P9 in the partially redacted document, told Trump the claims would get “slaughtered” in court.
10:31PM
What has happened so far in Trump’s criminal case?
In August last year, Trump was charged with four counts relating to his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The case was put on hold while the former president’s claim that he was protected from prosecution made its way through the courts.
In the Supreme Court this summer, justices ruled that Trump was immune from prosecution for conduct involving his interactions with the Justice Department.
Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment in August which kept the four initial charges against Trump but narrowed the scope of the allegations.
10:17PM
Court filing: Trump knew election fraud claims were false
Trump and his co-conspirators continued to make false claims about election fraud “even after they had been publicly disproven” and advisers told him they were untrue.
The former president is accused of making “unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing claims” of election fraud, such as that large numbers of dead or eligible voters had cast ballots.
The court filing alleges Trump “knew his fraud claims were false” because a White House staffer and Mike Pence told him they were not true.
Trump was told by one aide, who is referred to as P9 in the filing, that he “could not mount successful legal challenges to the election”.
When Trump said he would only pay his lawyer if he “succeeded”, P9 told him “he would never have to pay” him anything, to which Trump laughed and said “we’ll see”.
After P9 again told the defendant he would be unable to prove his false fraud allegations in court, Trump is said to have replied: “The details don’t matter.”
10:15PM
The tough special counsel aiming to put Trump in jail
When Alexi Schacht was asked to defend Manzoor Qadar, who was accused of murdering his niece’s husband as part of an honour killing, he thought it would be a doddle.
The prosecution was relying on “thin” circumstantial evidence to prove his client had travelled from Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1996 to shoot Shaukat Parvez dead in Queens in exchange for a £46,000 bounty.
So confident was Mr Schacht that the case would fall apart, he branded it at the time as “one of the weakest prosecutions I’ve ever seen”.
But the one thing the lawyer hadn’t factored into the trial at Brooklyn federal court was his opponent: Jack Smith.
Read the full profile from Susie Coen, our US Correspondent, here.
10:03PM
Trump ‘said ‘so what’ when Mike Pence was rushed to safety’
Donald Trump said “so what” when Mike Pence was rushed to safety during the Capitol riots, a new court filing reveals.
Trump, then the US president, was told that his vice president had been forced to flee the Capitol on January 6 2021 as rioters burst in, according to court documents filed by special counsel Jack Smith.
A US judge has made the 165-page document public, in which prosecutors lay out their evidence that allegedly shows Trump illegally tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
It reads: “Upon receiving a phone call alerting him that Pence had been taken to a secure location, [redacted] rushed to the dining room to inform the defendant [Trump] in hopes that the defendant would take action to ensure Pence’s safety.
“Instead, after [redacted] delivered the news, the defendant looked at him and said only, “So what?”
What a piece of shyt
