Jack Smith Reveals the Words That Could Have Buried Trump

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1:00Hey, it's Will Salatan from the Bullwork. So this week, Republicans in the Senate had a hearing to attack Jack Smith, the special council who investigated Donald Trump. They're trying to put Smith, the prosecutor. They're trying to put him on trial. They don't want to talk about the real trial, right? The trial that Smith never got to present against the actual criminal, which is Donald Trump. And it wasn't because Smith didn't have the goods. It was because even though he already had two indictments against Trump from two different grand juries, he wasn't allowed to continue that prosecution once Trump got reelected. So instead of this bogus hearing, I'm going to show you something better. I'm going to put together. But Jack Smith has said in three separate hearings, I'm going to put all of that together to show you what you never got to see. The trial of Donald Trump for trying to overthrow the 2020 election.

2:04Let's start with the hardest part of the case. The main charge against Trump was that he committed fraud, that he used deception to try to stop Congress from certifying the election. So one of the arguments in Trump's defense is that he actually believed that he won the election. So the challenge for the prosecutor is how do you show that Trump wasn't just delusional? How do you show that he was dishonest? And here is how Smith answers that question. He says Trump was repeatedly told the truth, but Trump refused to listen. So here is the prosecutor. This is from a hearing in January before the House Judiciary Committee. Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump was not looking for honest answers about whether there was fraud in the election. He was looking for ways to stay in power. And when people told him things that conflicted with him staying in power, he rejected them.

3:10The key phrase there is that Trump was not looking for honest answers. It doesn't matter what Trump cooked up in his head. The thing to focus on is how did Trump respond to information? He chose to ignore any information that refuted his allegations about the election. That is a choice. And it is a dishonest choice. Now, the defense might say, hey, Trump always rejects what the media say. But Smith has an answer for that. Smith doesn't talk about what the media said. He talks about what Republicans, what Republicans around Trump told Trump. Here is what Smith said when he was asked, who told Trump that Trump's statements about the election were false? That came from a number of sources. It came from staff in the White House who talked to him and told him that his fraud claims were

4:17not true. It came from staff on his campaign who told him that. It came from members of the Department of Justice. It came from state officials. Over and over again, the people who had the best, who were best situated to know how the elections were conducted in these states. He either avoided contacting them or disregarded the clear debunkings that were provided to him such as by the Georgia Secretary of State. These were Trump's political allies. Some of them were his friends. They told him, look, look, we all support you. We wish you were right. We wish that there was evidence of all this fraud you're talking about, but there just isn't. And Smith pointed out that these were the same people. Trump did listen to when they gave him information on other topics. It included officials, advisors, people he worked with in the White House who he relied upon

5:22from important decisions and who he trusted in other contexts. That is a really important point. Trump listened to these people. He listened to them except on this subject. He wasn't checked out. He wasn't incapable of listening. He chose to ignore them and he did it selectively. Again, that is dishonest. That is what Smith told the House Committee in January. But what would the case look like in court? What evidence would he present? For that, we need to go back to a deposition that Smith gave to the same committee in December. Here is what he said when a lawyer for the Democrats on the committee asked him this question about Trump. Can you describe or summarize some of these false claims he made to the American public after he knew that he had lost the election? Sure. These would be false claims about dead voters.

6:26It would be false claims about underage voters. It would be false claims about illegal alien voters. The false claims were generally, as a general matter, about urban centers where he had lost the vote in a particular state that was otherwise close by a lot. And again, these were claims that were rebutted by people around him who knew that they were false and in many cases, they told the members of the false. Dead voters, underage voters, illegal aliens, urban voters, you know what that means. Trump spewed a whole bunch of lies about every kind of fraud and the people who worked for Trump told him, they told him it was all bogus. For example, Georgia, here is what Smith told the House Committee in his deposition. That's the sort of thing that creates distrust.

7:28There were fraud claims in Michigan, Georgia, where he was specifically disabused by people he trusted, by political allies, by the people when he chose to call them who were best situated to know. And Georgia, I'm thinking of the Secretary of State. He reflexively rejected those things and continued to state false things after he'd been told that repeatedly that they weren't true. So you heard Smith mention the Secretary of State in Georgia. Now, that would be a big part of the trial because we actually have audio of the phone call in which the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Rappensberger, a Republican, a Trump voter, we have audio in which he repeatedly explained to Trump why all of his allegations were wrong. Here is part of the call. Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. Brad, why did they put the vote in three times?

8:30You know, they put them in three times. But, Mr. President, they did not put that. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scant three times. The audio goes on like that for an hour. Rappensberger just demolishes every phony accusation. And this was four days before January 6th. So Trump ignores everything Rappensberger told him and Trump goes right back out and he repeats all the same bullshit at his rally in Washington on January 6th. So that is one state. Now let's look at another state, Pennsylvania. The grand jury indictment explains that Trump was told before the election by his own campaign team that the late breaking ballots in Pennsylvania would go against him because they were going to come from democratic parts of the state. He was told that.

9:30Here is how Smith explained all of that in his deposition. He was on notice in this election that in Pennsylvania, for example, that he would be ahead in the vote count for a period of time. And then when the mail-in ballots were counted, his lead would dissipate. He chose to represent that phenomena that he'd been briefed on that was a normal course of an election that all sides knew that that was going to be. He chose to present that as evidence of fraud. Again, that's a place where Trump was told the truth and he just chose to ignore what he was told and he went right back out and lied. And then after the election and after Trump was out there lying, he was told again by the chairman of the state party, the Pennsylvania Republican Party. He was told by that guy that his claims were not true. The chair of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, guy by the name of, I think his name was Tabis,

10:36very shortly after the election. This isn't, I want to say, mid to early November. Disabused, President Trump of the idea that the reason his vote total, his lead was going down was because of fraud. And he explained again, that's how we all knew that that's how this was going to work with absentee ballots in the state of Pennsylvania, which we had very strong evidence that Trump had fact-hit and briefed upon by his campaign staff. You can tell that Smith is a little fuzzy there because he hadn't reviewed the evidence in more than a year. But if this case had gone to court, as it should have, the prosecution would lay out all of these details. So Georgia, Pennsylvania, how about Arizona, right? Here's what Smith said about how Trump handled Arizona. And he was told by his campaign team in essence that if you can't win Arizona, you can't win the election, and then he lost Arizona, he changed out that team and went with Giuliani

11:41and his group. Again, Trump's own people told him the truth. And Trump's response was, he got rid of them, right? It just goes back to the central point, which is that Trump was not looking for honest answers. This year's girls' trip to tell you where I was the best. We win up ourselves with my Sapphire preferred card, and with five times points on Chase Travel plus three times points on vacation homes with top brands, we got this incredible cabin. It was a mansion. And with three times the points on dining, we ordered a Wagyu steak dinner, and that pistachio gelato was too good. So, where should we go next year? I've got ideas. Chase Sapphire preferred, the card that's preferred for a reason. It's issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, a name member FDIC, Subject to Credit Abruble, Terms Applied. Now, if this were a trial, you wouldn't just be hearing all this from the prosecutors. You would have actual testimony from the witnesses who saw Trump say and do all of this stuff. And in some cases, you would have more than witnesses.

12:44You would have audio like the phone call in Georgia, or you would have written evidence, right? In a case where you would have emails from Trump's own staff. There was a persistent claim that more people had voted than it had been given ballots. And it was a very clear thing that we were talking about two different elections. And there's traffic, e-mount traffic, among his staff and people who worked for him about how obvious this wasn't true. And persistently kept making that statement over and over again. So, in court, the prosecution would show you these emails. And then they would show you Trump repeating the allegations that the emails admitted were false. And then here's another case where they would show you Trump's signature on a lawsuit. His own people in writing had already admitted was wrong.

13:48There was another lawsuit in Georgia where one of the co-conspirators explicitly said in an email. We're on notice that the things in this lawsuit aren't accurate. So we shouldn't have the president sign a certification of this lawsuit. And then they played with the language a little and had him sign a certification nonetheless. So all of that is examples of Trump being told the truth and then choosing to ignore it. But that is not the best evidence that he lied. The best evidence is his own words. Here are two quotes from Trump, reported by witnesses and read out loud by Smith from his report on the investigation. I didn't Trump ever acknowledge, and I believe you talked about it in this paragraph, but the president Trump ever acknowledged that he knew that he had actually lost the election of President Biden. Yeah, so this paragraph references different statements that he made in the presence of other people. One is that it doesn't matter if you want to lost the election, you still fight like hell.

14:55And then the other was, can you believe I lost to this effing guy? Here are the quotes in the report. You can see it right there. He said, it doesn't matter if you want to lost the election. That's what he said. He was going to fight even if he was wrong. And then you can see at the bottom down there, there's also a third incident where Trump literally told Mike Pence that he was quote, too honest. So all of those statements, all of them show how totally ruthless Trump was. He didn't give a damn about the truth. And then there's another quote where Trump basically admitted that he was peddling stories from somebody he knew was nuts. Here is Smith in his deposition. That Sidney Powell, who's alleged as one of the co-conspirators, was part of his team at the beginning of this conspiracy.

15:57Shortly after she began making statements that really nobody could credit, that were facially false. And at some point, Giuliani made a statement that she was not on the legal team anymore. And Trump at one point was on a call, President Trump, where he, if I recollect it right, he muted the call and said she was crazy. But then after that point, he continued to promote her fraud claims and lawsuits. He considered putting her as a special counsel, even though he admitted he used the word crazy. Trump said she was crazy and then he repeated all of her crazy stuff anyway. Plus, plus Smith has evidence that Trump told the top people at the Department of Justice to lie about the election. Now the key thing here is that these DOJ officials told Trump that based on the evidence, they

17:03didn't believe that the election was corrupt. But Trump told them to say it was corrupt anyway. We had evidence from the Department of Justice officials that Donald Trump said to them, just say the election is corrupt and leave the rest to me in the Republican congressman. That episode is really important because even if you think that Trump believed that Trump believed the election was stolen, even if you accept that, he knew from what the DOJ officials told him, right, that they didn't believe it was stolen. So he knew that he was telling them to tell the public something they did not believe. He knew he was telling them to lie. By the way, if you don't know and you're finding this video on YouTube or through a podcast, I'm a writer for the bullwork.com. We have been covering Donald Trump's crimes from day one and we're not going to let up,

18:07most of what we publish is free, but it's good stuff. So we hope you'll subscribe. Check it out. Okay, enough about the line. I want to show you one more part of the case as you would have heard it in court. This is the part about the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. Here is Smith in the House hearing. Recalling what Trump said at his rally on January 6th right before the attack about letting Congress certify that he had lost the election. He told that crowd, we can't let this happen. And he told them that my recollection is multiple times at a time when there was nothing that could be done to stop the outcome of the election but to obstruct it. In addition to that, he told them when there is fraud, you can go by different rules. So that is actually two statements. The first one is Trump telling the mob to stop Congress.

19:09At a point when the only way to stop Congress was physical intimidation. And the second statement, the second one was Trump told the mob to set aside the rules, which meant setting aside the Constitution. Again, if you were on the jury, you'd see the video played in court. Here is exactly what Trump said. When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules. So that is the second part of the case. First, Trump sprayed a bunch of lies about fraud. And then he used those lies to justify telling the mob to stop Congress from certifying the election. And then, and then once the mob did what he told them to do, which was to march on the Capitol, and then once the violence began, Trump sat there. He sat there in the White House and he watched it. Here is some of the evidence Smith would have presented about a phone call to Trump during

20:14the attack from Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Speaker of the House. On January 6th, we had information from Mark Meadows, who was present for a call where Congress from MacArthur was asking for help. He was asking the President to come to his aid while the Capitol was being seized. And Smith has a lot more evidence of other calls from other Republicans pleading with Trump to call off the mob. That violence started. The President refused to stop it. He endangered the life of his vice president. And he's getting calls and not just from Democrats, not calls from people he doesn't know, calls from people he trusts, calls from people he relies on, and still refuses to come to the aid of the people at the Capitol. That's very important evidence for criminal intent in our case. And one last thing, you can be sure, you can be sure that at this case went to trial,

21:19the defense would do exactly exactly what Republicans are doing now. The defense would say that this whole investigation was a partisan hit job by the Democrats. But Jack Smith has an answer for that too. Here is what he told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. I personally find it very hard to understand how our investigation can be viewed as partisan when the strongest witnesses, the people who were the difference between the rule of law standing in not, in our case, were Republicans, people like Rusty Bowers and Arizona, people like Mike Pence who did the right thing and put the interest of the country over the personal interest of Donald Trump. He's right. And if this were a trial, you would hear from those witnesses. You would hear from Pence and Bowers and Raffensberger and all the Republicans who told Trump the truth and could not get him to stop lying.

22:22But you never got to see that. Because Trump got elected and Jack Smith was told that even though he had two indictments of Trump from two different grand juries on seven criminal counts, even though he had all of that, he was told that he had to shut down his investigation just because Trump got elected president. And now the criminal, the criminal sits in the White House and his flunkies in Congress attack the prosecutor. But hey, I'm glad. I'm glad Smith finally got a chance to testify. And I'm glad he got to present his case, at least in these bits and pieces. So I could show you how it would have gone and how it should have gone in court. And you can be the jury. How would you vote if you heard all of that? Let me know in the comments and I'll see you next time.