An aide, on Jan. 6, 2021, as the U.S. Capitol was being overrun by MAGA rioters trying to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election, informed Donald Trump, sitting alone in the White House dining room, that Vice President Mike Pence was being evacuated after the rioters had gotten within 40 feet of his U.S. Senate office.
Trump’s response: “So what?”
ICYMI: Veep debate: JD Vance was winning on style, until the Jan. 6 question
This, we learned, from the bombshell 165-page legal brief unsealed by a federal judge on Wednesday, detailing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against the former president, who faces an array of federal charges in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election that he directed for the purpose of being able to remain in power.
Among the things we learned about Jan. 6, 2021, and the weeks leading up to it:
The idea all along: Declare victory, no matter what
As Trump did in 2016, when the polls had Hillary Clinton on the verge of eeking out a narrow win, and Trump prepped the battlefield with claims that the election had already been “rigged,” this was the plan going into Election Day 2020, with one lesson learned from how the results were slowly made public on Election Night four years earlier.
Knowing that there would be delays in final vote tallies due to the massive increase in early voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the plan on the part of the Trump team going into Election Night 2020 was to “just declare victory,” according to the indictment.
“That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner. That’s our strategy,” an aide had said, according to the indictment.
Trump was well aware that he’d lost the election
“Details don’t matter,” Trump told one aide, when it came to the results of the 2020 election, which he lost by more than 7 million votes to Joe Biden, who won the Electoral College tally by a 302-236 margin.
“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” Trump was overheard telling members of his family. “You still have to fight like hell.”
This echoes what Trump said in his speech to thousands of his supporters on the National Mall on Jan. 6, 2021, ahead of the riots, in which he implored his MAGA followers to “fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore.”
Top Trump aides were also aware that Trump had lost
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent texts saying fraud claims about 10,000 dead people had voted were false – “the actual number was 12” – as the Trump campaign was pushing those claims at a Michigan court hearing.
A person believed to be senior Trump advisor Jason Miller said “it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy s–t beamed down from the mothership,” and referred to the lawyers representing Trump post-election as the “Star Wars bar,” a callback to the odd collection of characters from the cantina scene in the hit movie.
Those ‘Star Wars bar’ lawyers: ‘Crazy’ and ‘unhinged’
One scene laid out in the indictment involved a conference call with his staff and legal advisors in which Trump made it clear that he didn’t believe the wild claims of lawyer Sidney Powell, who he derided as “crazy” and “unhinged.”
Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts related to the effort to overturn the election in 2023.
The move to hire Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and 2008 Republican presidential primary candidate, was made because Guiliani “was willing to falsely claim victory and spread knowingly false claims of election fraud,” according to the indictment.
The caveat: Smith wrote in the indictment that Trump had told staffers he would only pay Guiliani if the legal cases succeeded.
Guiliani, in a 2024 court filing in his bankruptcy case, part of the fallout from a $148 million defamation judgment against him related to his wild claims about the 2020 election, said he was owed $2 million for his legal work for the Trump campaign.
One funny tidbit involving Guiliani from the unsealed indictment: he sent a proposed resolution for Michigan lawmakers to declare the election there to be in dispute via text to the wrong phone number.
The Christmas Day conspiracy
Several of Trump’s top aides and advisors text-chained a new scheme on Christmas Day 2020: the idea being to have Pence to “permit an unlimited filibuster of the certification,” then “ultimately gavel in [Trump] as president.”
This was the genesis of the plan, after the Trump team had gone 0-for-62 in its legal challenges, to have Pence play the key role in overturning the election.
As it became clear that Pence wasn’t going to go along, Trump got increasingly frustrated with the VP, eventually telling him that “hundreds of thousands” of people “are gonna hate your guts.”
What was Trump doing on Jan. 6?
Coinciding with the “so what?” comment about the danger being faced by Pence, Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m. on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, that Pence had lacked “courage” because he hadn’t bowed to pressure from Trump to use his ceremonial role overseeing the U.S. Senate to halt the certification of the election.
We knew about the tweet; what we learned from the unsealed indictment is that Trump was the one who pecked it out with his own tiny little fingers on his personal phone.
“The defendant personally posted the tweet … at a point when he already understood the Capitol had been breached,” the indictment tells us.
We also learned that Trump was alone with his phone in the White House dining room watching Fox News coverage of the riot, and spent most of his time on the phone on Twitter.
What’s particularly interesting there: we now know that prosecutors have had access to Trump’s phone.
Wonder what else they found that they haven’t revealed yet?
ICYMI: The crimes of Jan. 6
For more coverage, search “Jan. 6” on Augusta Free Press.
- FBI arrests Waynesboro man for violent actions against police in Jan. 6 attack on Capitol
- Insurrectionist from Virginia ordered to pay $25K fine; led Jan. 6 charge with megaphone
- Virginia man who led ‘patriots’ into U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 sentenced to six months
- FBI: 1,500 charged to date in ‘fight’ incited by former President Donald Trump on Jan. 6
- DOJ: Culpeper man arrested for actions during ‘Stop the Steal’ insurrection on U.S. Capitol
- Frederick County School Board member pleads guilty to role in Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach
- Virginia father, son used water bottles, flagpoles in Jan. 6 assault on U.S. Capitol Police
- Virginia man arrested by FBI for felony obstruction charge related to Jan. 6 insurrection
- Louisa man arrested for assaulting law enforcement during Jan. 6 Capitol Breach
- Former Marine, Virginia Proud Boys member who used ‘big stick’ in breach of Capitol sentenced
- Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy, other charges
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Chris Graham
