<div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Donald Trump launched a "private criminal effort" to subvert the 2020 US election and should not be shielded by presidential immunity, Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a court filing unsealed on Wednesday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Smith, in a 165-page motion arguing for the historic case against Trump to move forward, also provided new evidence of the former president's efforts to overturn the results of the election won by Democrat Joe Biden.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Trump, 78, the Republican candidate in November's White House election, had been scheduled to go on trial in March but the case was frozen while his lawyers argued that a former president should be immune from criminal prosecution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Supreme Court ruled in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office, but can be pursued for unofficial acts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Smith, in the filing unsealed by District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is hearing the case, said Trump should not escape prosecution because "at its core, the defendant's scheme was a private criminal effort."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct," Smith said. "Not so."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Trump, acting as a candidate and not in his official capacity, "resorted to crimes to try to stay in office," the special counsel said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Trump's efforts allegedly included lying to state officials, manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes and seeking to get Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct congressional certification of Biden's victory.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"When all else had failed," the special counsel said, Trump directed an "angry crowd" of supporters to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to disrupt the certification.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to Smith's filing, a White House staffer told Trump during the January 6 rioting at the Capitol that Pence had been taken to a secure location, to which the president replied "So what?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- 'Crazy' -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Smith said there was abundant evidence that Trump knew his claims of electoral fraud were false because close advisers had told him so.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The former president even dismissed some of the most far-fetched fraud claims advanced by his supporters as "crazy," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The special counsel said a former White House staffer would testify at trial that he heard Trump tell family members after the vote that "it doesn't matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Trump, in a post on Truth Social after the filing was unsealed, said "Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This is egregious PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, and should not have been released right before the Election," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Chutkan has not set a date for a trial but it will not be held before the November 5 election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding -- the session of Congress that was violently attacked by Trump supporters.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The former president is also accused of seeking to disenfranchise US voters with his false claims that he won the 2020 election.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Trump was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He also faces charges in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>