The Detail in Jack Smith’s Trump Filing That Made Even Experts Gasp

One gruesome detail in Jack Smith’s sweeping legal brief about Donald Trump’s involvement in January 6 has shocked legal experts.

The 165-page filing, which was unsealed Wednesday by Judge Tanya Chutkan, provides new details about the co-conspirators and specific allegations connected to the former president’s 2020 election-subversion scheme—including one about former Vice President Mike Pence.

As MAGA rioters swarmed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, chanting their demand to “Hang Mike Pence!” a Trump aide received word that his running mate had been moved to a secure location for his safety, according to the filing.

The aide “rushed into the dining room to inform [Trump] in hopes that [Trump] would take action to ensure Pence’s safety.”

Instead, after the aide delivered the news, Trump allegedly replied, “So what?”

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said Wednesday night, during an interview with MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace, that she was taken aback by multiple moments described in the filing, but Wallace plucked that one out as the most disturbing.

“I’ll read first what made Lisa Rubin gasp. Why make everybody wait?” said Wallace, before reading from page 142.

“The cavalierness with which Donald Trump received that news certainly is news to me,” Rubin said.

During an interview on CNN Wednesday, Harvard constitutional law professor Lawrence Tribe told host Erin Burnett he also found that quote to be one of the most outlandish.

“There are lots of jaw-dropping things; you’ve named some of them. You know: ‘So what’ if this vice president is hung? ‘It doesn’t matter’ whether we’ve won or lost. That’s just a sampling; it’s the tip of a horribly large and scary iceberg,” Tribe explained.

In the filing, Trump allegedly made a comment to his family members that “it doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election, you still have to fight like hell.”

Donald Trump is not taking the release of new evidence in his 2020 election fraud case well.

The 165-page motion from special counsel Jack Smith was released to the public on Wednesday, and it detailed not only the former president’s efforts to overturn the election but also his indifference to the violence of the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Trump took to Truth Social to complain almost immediately.

“The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 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 Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” Trump wrote in one long-winded post.

“Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power,” the former president added.

Trump made several other posts into Thursday morning complaining that Democrats were interfering in the election, “Weaponizing the Justice Department against me,” and calling the Justice Department “THE DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE.”

The former president is famously thin-skinned, but he also has reason to be worried. Smith’s legal filing includes wild details about Trump blatantly presenting lies and showing indifference to rioting in his name, as well as his plans to undermine the election results before they took place. It also is tailored to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, in an effort to ensure Trump faces accountability for his attempts to overturn the election. Trump’s outbursts online might be his attempt to distract the public from the damning proof against him.

MAGA allies are trying to move on from their cataclysmic reaction to losing the 2020 presidential election—but that doesn’t mean that their leader is trying to do the same.

In an interview Wednesday night with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer brushed off concerns about the Republican reaction to the last election, claiming that no one but Collins was still focused on the election conspiracy.

“In 2020, you did sign onto that brief supporting a Texas lawsuit that would have invalidated the election results in four states,” Collins said. “But you ultimately chose to certify the election, you broke with some of your Republican colleagues, and you chose to certify.

“You said in a statement that ‘Congress does not have the authority to discard an individual slate of electors certified by a state’s legislature in accordance with their Constitution,’” Collins continued. “And you yourself said, ‘Doing so sets a precedent that I believe undermines the state-based system of elections that defines our Republic.’ Do you still feel that way tonight?”

“Again, Kaitlan, we’re talking about an election that’s going to take place in 35 days,” Emmer responded. “What are you doing talking about something that’s four years ago? We can have this debate at some other time going forward, but the people are hurting.”

But Collins had a point.

“Donald Trump is still talking about it,” the CNN anchor threw back.

Trump was posting about the election he lost as recently as Wednesday night, writing on Truth Social that he “didn’t rig the 2020 Election, they did!”

Some of Trump’s closest allies have refused to admit that the former president lost the 2020 election, dodging direct questions about whether they plan to reenact the same political violence after November’s election results roll in.

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Ohio Senator JD Vance refused to concede that the Republican presidential nominee lost the last election before doubling down during a heated exchange with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

“He is still saying he didn’t lose the election,” Walz said, turning to face Vance. “I would just ask that: Did he lose the 2020 election?”

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance responded, twisting his argument into a weird tie-in about Vice President Kamala Harris and Facebook’s content moderation policies during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“That is a very damning nonanswer,” Walz said.

In a Virginia Senate debate Wednesday night, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine’s Trump-endorsed opponent Hung Cao took the stage with some unhinged remarks about drag queens, alpha males, and DEI.

Cao, a Navy veteran, was asked about his previous statements about what he sees as the “growing obsession” with diversity, equity, and inclusion in the military—and somehow answered with a cannibalistic rant.

“When you’re using a drag queen to recruit for the Navy, that’s not the people we want,” said Cao. “What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them and ask for seconds. Those are young men and women that are going to win wars.”

It’s unclear what Cao meant in the cannibalistic part of the rant, beyond scorning drag queens and anyone he doesn’t see as “alpha.”When NBC News reached the Republican’s office for comment, he doubled down about his debate remarks: “I just said what everyone believes as fact.”

In the debate, he also parroted Trump’s lines about immigration and the so-called migrant crisis. Cao, whose family came to the U.S. from Vietnam, did not push back against the moderator’s question about deporting all undocumented immigrants. Instead, he made a call for assimilation. “Don’t ask for the American dream if you’re not willing to obey American laws and embrace the American culture.” On his campaign website, the candidate promises to “repel this invasion.”

According to the RealClearPolitics poll average, Kaine leads Cao by 10 points in the state.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page unsealed motion included revelations about Donald Trump in his January 6 election interference case and a plea for the judge overseeing it to carefully consider the boundaries of what constitutes an “official act” under the new, expanded definition of presidential immunity.

But it also included a jab at the nation’s highest court, using Trump’s private phone calls to underscore that the Supreme Court had extended its aid to a former president who had no appreciation for its labor.

In a section of the document outlining the similarities between Trump’s private rhetoric and that included in his January 6 Ellipse speech, Smith’s office highlighted how Trump, even then, was attacking the nation’s highest court for “not stepping up to the plate” in his legal woes.

“I’m not happy with the Supreme Court. They are not stepping up to the plate. They’re not stepping up,” Trump said in a private conversation.

Then, at the Ellipse, he shared a near-verbatim gripe: “I’m not happy with the Supreme Court. They love to rule against me.”

The Supreme Court handed Trump one of the biggest wins of his career in July, when it ruled 6–3 to expand a president’s immunity and redefine what constitutes an “official act,” effectively deciding that Trump could not be held accountable for some of his behavior with regard to attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor feared for the future of a country that legally permits the executive branch authority to commit crimes under the cloak of the office, arguing that the court’s decision made a “mockery” of the constitutional principle that “no man is above the law” and that the court’s “own misguided wisdom” gave Trump “all the immunity he asked for and more.”