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    A ‘gut punch’: Trump’s alleged sexual assault victims and their advocates on his win

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    When Donald Trump was elected to a second term last week, women who say he sexually assaulted them, and other victims of sexual abuse, voiced disappointment that a man repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct could once again become president, with one of them describing this win as a “gut punch”.More than two dozen women have made such claims against Trump, including E Jean Carroll, who was awarded nearly $90m total in two civil trials after jurors found that Trump sexually abused and defamed her. She said on X: “I tried to tell you.”Several survivors of sexual assault interviewed by the Guardian, as well as advocates for persons who have suffered abuse, said they were not surprised by Trump’s win. They felt it was another example of how sexual abuse is not taken seriously, or pointed to the fact that powerful people who perpetrate abuse seem to be able to avoid repercussions.Stacey Williams, who said she met Trump through Jeffrey Epstein about three decades ago, and told the Guardian that the now president-elect groped her at Trump Tower in 1993 in what seemed to be a “twisted game” with the late sex predator, is among the many processing election results.“I think what we were all hoping was that [the] truth would come through and the stories would affect people’s vote once they had [them] in front of them.”But, she said: “Disinformation won this election at the end of the day, and if we don’t figure out an answer for that, I don’t have a lot of hope for this country.”Emails to Trump’s camp did not receive an immediate response. Trump has previously denied all allegations of misconduct.Williams said that she was in Pennsylvania canvassing for five days. “Some of the women would say: ‘Will you please tell my husband your story?” she recalled.One woman even brought Williams into the house, so she could tell the woman’s brother her account. Williams did and “I saw him just kind of like, sink.” To her, the reaction suggested that he had not heard this account before.“I didn’t get the impression he even knew that Trump was an offender.“I had never wanted to tell my story, I knew it was going to be sort of a big media firestorm and blow up – that’s a lot to take on, let alone all the backlash and the misogyny,” she also said. “I was bracing myself for that, but it was worth it if I could get my message out there.“None of it mattered. All he had to do was say: ‘Eh, she’s lying,’” Williams said, prompting his followers to take the same tack. “Everyone’s like: ‘OK, let’s move on.’ That’s a lot to stomach.”Among the women who have come forward with allegations against Trump is Amy Dorris, a former model, who told the Guardian that he sexually assaulted her at the US Open tennis tournament in 1997. Dorris alleged that Trump forced his tongue down her throat, groped her body and kept her in a grip from which she could not escape, in an incident that made her feel “sick” and “violated”.Two other prominent accusers include Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, who testified in court for Carroll’s civil proceedings against Trump. Stoynoff said that Trump assaulted her in a room at Mar-a-Lago about 20 years ago, when People magazine had sent her there to interview him about his first year of marriage to his third wife, Melania Trump.Leeds came forward in 2016 claiming that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt when they were seated next to each other on an airplane in the 1970s. At a campaign rally, Trump responded by saying: “Believe me, she would not be my first choice. That I can tell you,” and a campaign spokesperson said her allegation was “fiction”.Marissa Hoechstetter, who successfully pushed for New York’s watershed Adult Survivors Act, among other extensive advocacy, following her abuse at the hands of a now convicted obstetrician, said Trump’s win underscored that many people don’t see sexual violence as a problem.“It reaffirms that sexual violence is tolerated and it’s not disqualifying,” Hoechstetter said. “I don’t think it’s whether or not we proved that he did these things – I feel like it was [proved] – we’ve proved that people still don’t care.”“I’m not shocked by it; it’s a good reminder for us all that sexual violence is not an issue that people are willing to make big decisions on. There are other factors that are more important to them.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHoechstetter believes that Trump’s victory could have a “chilling effect down the line”. His win doesn’t take away survivors’ advocacy efforts, but “it negates all of the work that went into trying to hold him accountable in a court of law,” potentially deterring accusers from coming forward if they see that nothing will happen – especially given the immense personal toll that comes with speaking out.Erica Vladimer, co-founder of the Sexual Harassment Working Group, said she wasn’t surprised that Trump won despite his reported behavior towards women. (The Sexual Harassment Working Group is comprised of former New York city and state legislative staffers who have experienced harassment, abuse, and retaliation by officials, and seeks to change laws and policies to protect workers.)“I have never been under this illusion that the fact that Trump is a serial sexual harasser and a sexual abuser was top of mind for most voters – that it was a priority when it came to who they were going to vote for as president,” Vladimer said. “And yet, that does not make this gut punch any easier to stomach.”“Until our institutions, the people who hold that power, are willing to say this is not OK, I think we’re going to see men like Trump continue to amass power and enable this permission structure that has really been there for a long time,” Vladimer said.Trump’s second win prompted questions about why a president’s character does not appear to matter to voters – as well as about the character of those he surrounds himself with. The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who has been investigated for alleged sexual misconduct and trafficking, is Trump’s attorney general pick. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.Weeks before the 2016 election, a hot mic recording from the Access Hollywood television show emerged. In this recording, Trump boasted that he could sexually assault women due to his fame, saying: “Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”Following Trump’s win, the phrase “your body, my choice” – which had circulated in far-right circles for several years – gained momentum on social media. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a thinktank that studies extremism, identified “a 4,600% increase in mentions of the terms ‘your body, my choice’ and ‘get back in the kitchen’ on X”.Gloria Allred, who in her decades as an attorney has advocated for survivors, including five Trump accusers, said: “a theme of the former president’s recent campaign appeared to be male chauvinism” and referred to the American Psychological Association guidance that recognizes “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful” to men and boys.But, “I believe that women and girls will also suffer from this version of toxic masculinity, and they are endangered by it. Evidence of this is now seen online where some young men seem comfortable saying ‘your body, my choice’, which could be the mantra of rapists, sexual harassers and child molesters,” Allred said in a statement.“I wonder how these young men would feel if other men decided that they had a right to rape, beat or abuse the bodies of the young men’s mothers, sisters, aunts or grandmothers,” Allred’s statement continued. “My guess is that when these young men get older and have daughters they will regret their words.”Mariann Wang, an attorney whose practice focuses on survivors who has also represented Trump accusers, said his win was “devastating”.“It is an expression, yet again, that millions of people do not prioritize the safety of their mothers, their sisters, their daughters or their friends,” she said in a statement.“That said, I’ve also seen the enormous courage and power of so many women willing to keep fighting for their rights and for equality all these years,” Wang said. “And as devastating as this is, I know all those women and men who support them will keep fighting.” More

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      Trump advisers reportedly consider ‘warrior board’ to remove military leaders; Mike Huckabee named US envoy to Israel – live

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      Donald Trump’s transition team is working on an executive order that would create a new body tasked with naming military leaders who should be demoted, the Wall Street Journal reports.The reported proposal for a “warrior board” staffed by former military officers loyal to the president-elect is the latest sign that Trump may make due on his threat to retaliate against leaders at all levels of government who have broken with him, or who are perceived as disloyal.Here’s more on the proposal, from the Journal:
      If Donald Trump approves the order, it could fast-track the removal of generals and admirals found to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,” according to a draft of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But it could also create a chilling effect on top military officers, given the president-elect’s past vow to fire “woke generals,” referring to officers seen as promoting diversity in the ranks at the expense of military readiness.
      As commander in chief, Trump can fire any officer at will, but an outside board whose members he appoints would bypass the Pentagon’s regular promotion system, signaling across the military that he intends to purge a number of generals and admirals.
      The draft order says it aims to establish a review that focuses “on leadership capability, strategic readiness, and commitment to military excellence.” The draft doesn’t specify what officers need to do or present to show if they meet those standards. The draft order originated with one of several outside policy groups collaborating with the transition team, and is one of numerous executive orders under review by Trump’s team, a transition official said.
      The warrior board would be made up of retired generals and noncommissioned officers, who would send their recommendations to the president. Those identified for removal would be retired at their current rank within 30 days.
      Karoline Leavitt, the Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman, declined to comment on this draft executive order but said “the American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”
      The House is scheduled to vote today on a bill targeting non-profit organizations deemed to be supporting “terrorism”.Civil rights advocates have raised alarm that bill, which was first introduced in response to nationwide protests on college campuses against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, could be used against pro-Palestinian groups as well as those that environmental groups, reproductive rights groups and other human rights organizations during the upcoming Trump administration.The language in the bill would give the Treasury Department broad authority to determine which organizations are “terrorist-supporting” without requiring evidence, and allow the agency to revoke tax-exempt status from those non-profits.Republicans drafted the policy as part of a popular measure to prevent the IRS from issuing fines and tax penalties to Americans held hostage by terrorist groups. The measure, which is being fast-tracked in the House, would need a two-thirds majority in the Senate to pass.“This bill requires no oversight. No due-process. No justification. In Trump’s hands, it would be a weapon of mass destruction against dissent,” said Andrew O’Neill, legislative director of the group Indivisible. “The vote today requires a two-thirds threshold to pass, so Democrats really do have agency here. The question is whether they’ll use it to stand up against authoritarian overreach, or if they’ll sit back and hand Trump more power.”“Passing this bill would hand the incoming Trump administration a dangerous new tool it could use to stifle free speech, target political opponents, and punish disfavored groups,” said Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU. “The freedom to dissent without fear of government retribution is a vital part of any well-functioning democracy, which is why Congress must block HR 9495 before it’s too late.”Donald Trump’s transition team is working on an executive order that would create a new body tasked with naming military leaders who should be demoted, the Wall Street Journal reports.The reported proposal for a “warrior board” staffed by former military officers loyal to the president-elect is the latest sign that Trump may make due on his threat to retaliate against leaders at all levels of government who have broken with him, or who are perceived as disloyal.Here’s more on the proposal, from the Journal:
      If Donald Trump approves the order, it could fast-track the removal of generals and admirals found to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,” according to a draft of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But it could also create a chilling effect on top military officers, given the president-elect’s past vow to fire “woke generals,” referring to officers seen as promoting diversity in the ranks at the expense of military readiness.
      As commander in chief, Trump can fire any officer at will, but an outside board whose members he appoints would bypass the Pentagon’s regular promotion system, signaling across the military that he intends to purge a number of generals and admirals.
      The draft order says it aims to establish a review that focuses “on leadership capability, strategic readiness, and commitment to military excellence.” The draft doesn’t specify what officers need to do or present to show if they meet those standards. The draft order originated with one of several outside policy groups collaborating with the transition team, and is one of numerous executive orders under review by Trump’s team, a transition official said.
      The warrior board would be made up of retired generals and noncommissioned officers, who would send their recommendations to the president. Those identified for removal would be retired at their current rank within 30 days.
      Karoline Leavitt, the Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman, declined to comment on this draft executive order but said “the American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”
      At the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre is taking questions from reporters who are asking for an idea of what to expect when Joe Biden meets Donald Trump tomorrow.But the US press secretary does not have much to say. Responding to a reporter who wanted to know if they would discuss foreign policy issues such as US assistance to Ukraine and Israel, she said:
      I’m not going to get into the details of what’s going to be discussed tomorrow. That’s not something I’m going to get into here.
      What about concerns about Trump’s contacts with foreign leaders, many of whom have spoken to him by phone since he won the election? Jean-Pierre didn’t have much of a comment on that question, either:
      He’s the president-elect. Every president-elect receives calls from world leaders, takes calls from world leaders, has calls from world leaders. It is not unusual. [I] don’t have a comment beyond that, any specifics or details. That’s something for the … Trump transition.
      Donald Trump plans to begin his second presidential term with a bang, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports:Donald Trump will mark the first day of his return to the White House by signing a spate of executive orders to reinstate signature policies from his first presidency that were revoked by Joe Biden, according to his incoming chief of staff.Susie Wiles’s disclosure came in a closed-door meeting in Las Vegas of the Rockbridge Network, a group of conservative donors co-founded by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, the New York Times reported.She did not specify which policies were likely to be reintroduced in the flurry of signing that is expected on Trump’s first day back in the Oval Office.But several of Trump’s higher-profile executive orders that Biden revoked include leaving the Paris climate agreement, withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO) and banning entry to citizens from a list of predominantly Muslim countries.Did a majority of Latino men support Donald Trump, as some national exit polls suggest?No, according to the researchers behind the 2024 American Electorate Voter Poll, a survey of more than 9,400 voters that emphasizes accurately representing Black, Latino and AAPI voters.“The national exit polls are wrong about Latinos in general and Latino men in particular. They did shift more Republican, however a majority of Latino men continued to vote Democrat in 2024,” said Matt Baretto, a co-founder of BSP Research, told reporters on a call in which he presented the survey’s findings.“We’re extremely confident that our sample is accurate – that it is an accurate portrait of Latino men and Latino women and that it is balanced to measure the demographics and that it was available in Spanish at every stopping point in the survey.”According to the survey, Hispanic men supported Kamala Harris over Trump by a 13-point margin, compared with the 34-point margin among Hispanic women. Among Hispanic men under 40, Harris held an only four-point margin.Baretto said it was “incorrect, categorically” to suggest that any cohort of Latino men supported Trump over Harris.Even as he acknowledged Trump had made clear gains with Hispanic voters, he noted that Democrats performed worse this election cycle with “every single racial and ethnic group” than they did four years ago.The poll also found an uptick in support for Harris among Puerto Ricans, particularly in Pennsylvania, which Hispanic organizers attributed to a surge in fundraising after a shock-jock comic made disparaging comments about the island during Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.“The participation rate of Puerto Ricans and Latinos in Pennsylvania increased noticeably after the Madison Square Garden rally – a nine-point shift in Latino voter sentiment in Pennsylvania towards Harris,” said Frankie Miranda, president and CEO at Hispanic Federation, on the call.“The effect is undeniable, but it took a fluke very late in the game to get the attention of the campaigns and funders to provide investment desperately needed to ensure mobilization.Newly elected senators are in Washington DC for orientation, and true to form, West Virginia’s Jim Justice brought along his bulldog, Babydog.The dog has been by Justice’s side throughout his term as West Virginia’s governor, and the senator-elect was hoping to bring Babydog into the Senate chambers. But Axios reports that is against the rules:
      Justice was told by Senate floor staff that only service dogs are allowed onto the floor of the Senate, and that even in that case there would need to be an analysis on potential allergies.
      Justice had no such problems at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee this past summer, where Babydog was by his side throughout.Mike Johnson has congratulated congressman Mike Waltz on being selected as Donald Trump’s national security advisor.“Congressman Mike Waltz is a brilliant and faithful patriot, who has served our country as a Green Beret and a member of Congress. It has been his life’s mission to help protect the United States, and he will continue to do so as the President’s National Security Advisor,” the Republican House speaker said.He added that the Florida congressman is “the perfect person to advise President Trump and defend our interests on the world stage. I look forward to continuing to engage with him as Congress works to implement America First national security policies under the new Trump administration”.Waltz just won re-election to his district just north of Orlando, and his departure from Congress will trigger a special election to replace him. But Democrats are unlikely to win in Waltz’s district, which is sharply Republican.A new Louisiana law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public classroom by the beginning of 2025 has been temporarily blocked after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday.The judge said the law was “unconstitutional on its face” – and plaintiffs were likely to win their case with claims that the law violates the US constitution’s first amendment, which bars the government from establishing a religion and guarantees the right to religious freedom.The ruling marks a win for opponents of the law, who argue that it is a violation of the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.They also argue that the poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments would isolate students, especially those who are not Christian.Proponents say that the measure is not solely religious, but that it has historical significance to the foundation of US law.Donald Trump has announced that he will nominate Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, to be the US ambassador to Israel.Huckabee “loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him,” the president-elect said in a statement on Tuesday.“Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!” Trump added.Huckabee, who served as Arkansas governor from 1996 to 2007, is two-time Republican presidential hopeful and father to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the current governor of the state and Trump’s former White House press secretary.He is an outspoken settlement backer; in 2018, he said he dreamed of building a “holiday home” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Several hundred White House staffers loudly cheered for the vice-president, Kamala Harris, who was arriving for her lunch with Joe Biden.Staffers shouted “MVP”, for Madame vice-president, as she got out of her SUV and clapped and waved, per pool report.“We still have a lot of work to do,” Harris addressed staffers. “So thank you all very much.“Listen, we do the best work anybody could do, which is to dedicate ourselves to the people, to public service, to lifting folks up, knowing we have the power, and when we do that work, we make a difference, and you all are a part of doing that work every single day, and I am so grateful to each of you.“So let’s get back to work, because we still have work to get done. And I am sending all my love and thanks. Thank you, everyone.”Joni Ernst, the Republican senator for Iowa, has privately expressed interest in becoming Donald Trump’s defense secretary, according to multiple reports.If nominated and confirmed, Ernst, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, Iraq War veteran and member of the Senate’s armed services committee, would be the first woman to serve in the role.National security leaders have told Ernst that she would be a good fit for the job, but those conversations have not yet escalated to anything official, Notus reported.A source told the Washington Post on Tuesday that the idea started “gaining a life of its own yesterday”, but it’s not clear whether Trump will consider her for the role.Donald Trump has issued a statement announcing his appointment of Mike Waltz to serve in his cabinet as the national security adviser.Waltz “has been a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda, and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!” the president-elect said in a statement on Tuesday.Waltz, a Republican congressman representing east-central Florida and Trump loyalist who served in the national guard as a colonel, has criticized Chinese activity in the Asia-Pacific and voiced the need for the US to be ready for a potential conflict in the region.Waltz is a combat-decorated Green Beret and a former White House and Pentagon policy adviser. He was first elected in 2018, replacing Ron DeSantis, who ran for governor, in Florida’s sixth congressional district.Waltz served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, and he was awarded four bronze stars. He was one of the lawmakers appointed in July to serve on a bipartisan congressional taskforce to investigate the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.The judge who presided over Donald Trump’s hush money case has paused legal proceedings at the request of prosecutors and the president-elect’s attorneys, both of whom pointed to his victory in last week’s presidential election. Republicans are getting ready for Trump’s visit to the White House, with House speaker Mike Johnson saying he planned to have Trump address his lawmakers. Speaking of Congress, we still do not know for sure which party will control the House for the next two years. Counting of ballots in key races remains ongoing, though Republicans seem on track to keep their majority.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Samuel Alito, a long-serving conservative justice on the supreme court, has no plans to step down, the Wall Street Journal reported. If he changes his mind, Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate could confirm a replacement and likely prolong the court’s conservative supermajority.

      Trump will reportedly oppose a US law that could lead to popular social media app TikTok being banned, despite bipartisan support for the measure.

      Despite taking office with Republicans in control of Congress in 2017, Trump’s first years in office were marked by legislative chaos. Johnson vowed that won’t happen again when Trump returns to the White House in January.
      As Donald Trump appoints his cabinet, and searches for a treasury secretary, the billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson – a key backer of the president-elect – has withdrawn his name. He had been widely tipped as a likely candidate for the role.“Although various media outlets have mentioned me as a candidate for secretary of the treasury, my complex financial obligations would prevent me from holding an official position in President Trump’s administration at this time,” Paulson told The Wall Street Journal in a statement.He pledged to remain “actively involved” with Trump’s economic team, however, and in helping to implement the incoming administration’s policy agenda.Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Bob Casey still is not conceding, despite grim signs for the Democratic senator’s prospects of re-election.The Associated Press has already called the race for Republican challenger David McCormick, but ballot counting is ongoing. In a new statement, Casey signaled he is waiting for that process to finish:
      My priority has always been standing up for the people of Pennsylvania. Across our Commonwealth, close to seven million people cast their votes in a free and fair election. Our county election officials will finish counting those votes, just like they do in every election. The American democratic process was born in Pennsylvania and that process will play out.
      I want to thank the election workers across our Commonwealth who have been working diligently over the weekend. Their work will ensure Pennsylvanians’ voices are heard.” More

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      in Elections

      Arizona attorney general says she won’t drop Trump fake electors case

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      Allies of Donald Trump who were charged in Arizona for illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election can still expect to face justice despite his return to the White House, the state’s attorney general has said.Kris Mayes told MSNBC on Sunday that she had “no intention” of dropping the criminal case against defendants including the former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Christina Bobb, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior officials of the Arizona Republican party such as the former chair Kelli Ward and state senators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman.A grand jury in April indicted 18 people in a “fake electors” scheme that sought to falsely declare Trump the winner in the crucial swing state instead of Joe Biden. Most pleaded not guilty in May to felony charges of fraud, forgery and conspiracy.The fates of various criminal cases pending against Trump and his allies were left uncertain after his defeat of Kamala Harris in the 5 November election.For instance, the US justice department is winding down its criminal cases in federal court against Trump.And, in New York, state court judge Juan Merchan is preparing to rule on whether Trump’s conviction on charges of criminally falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels should be tossed out.But Mayes has said she intends to stay the course with her office’s case.“I have no intention of breaking that case up. I have no intention of dropping that case,” Mayes, a Democrat, told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi.“A grand jury in the state of Arizona decided that these individuals who engaged in an attempt to overthrow our democracy in 2020 should be held accountable, so we won’t be cowed, we won’t be intimidated.”In August, Loraine Pellegrino, the former president of a Republican women’s group, became the first of the defendants convicted when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document.Another of those accused, Jenna Ellis, a former Trump lawyer, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, including sitting for interviews and handing over documents, in exchange for having her charges dismissed.At the time, Mayes said Ellis’s insights were “invaluable and will greatly aid the state in proving its case in court”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlso in August, the Arizona superior court judge Bruce Cohen denied a request by the remaining defendants to have the charges dismissed as “politically motivated” and set a provisional trial date for January 2026.As a state case, anybody who is convicted in Arizona cannot be pardoned by Trump, who was referred to throughout the charging documents as an unindicted co-conspirator and as the “former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election”.The Arizona fake electors scheme was replicated in a number of swing states that ultimately all certified Biden’s victory. The most prominent took place in Georgia, where Trump is one of the defendants, although two charges against him were thrown out in September – and some of the 17 others originally charged have accepted plea deals in return for giving evidence to prosecutors.Fani Willis, the Fulton county prosecutor who brought the Georgia case, was re-elected on 5 November. But no trial date has been set, and there is doubt over its timing given that Trump will be back in the White House in January.The other defendants in the Arizona case include Kelli Ward’s husband, Michael; Robert Montgomery, former head of the Cochise county Republican party; Tyler Bowyer, the Republican national committee’s Arizona representative; Greg Safsten, former executive director of the state Republican party; and activists Samuel Moorhead and Nancy Cottle, who allegedly agreed to act as fake electors. More

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      in US Politics

      US special counsel to wind down criminal cases against Donald Trump

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      Special counsel prosecutors will shut down their criminal cases against Donald Trump before he takes office, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, after his stunning victory against Kamala Harris meant they would not proceed to trial.The move reflects the reality that the cases will not be completed before inauguration day. Once Trump returns to the White House, the special counsel’s office would be prohibited from pursuing further criminal actions under justice department policy.The justice department has long known that if Trump won, the criminal cases – over Trump’s retention of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election – would be finished because Trump’s attorney general would likely drop the charges.But it is also understood to be a preemptive measure to ensure that Trump will not be able to order the dismissal of the special counsel, Jack Smith, as he had vowed to do if he takes office and Smith remained in his role.That possibility had been relished by Trump’s close aides and advisers, who privately imagined Trump ordering Smith’s removal and his team having to vacate their office space in Washington.The justice department is still examining how to wind down the cases, which are in different stages and are complicated. In particular, the department does not want the classified documents case, which was dismissed and currently under appeal, to go unchallenged.Failure to pursue an appeal over the dismissal of the classified documents case on grounds that the special counsel himself was illegally appointed could set a problematic precedent and hamper the department’s ability to use special counsels in the future.Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2022 under the cloud of an impending special counsel investigation. That investigation examined Trump’s retention of national security materials at his Mar-a-Lago club after he lost the 2020 presidential election.He repeatedly told supporters at rallies and in public statements that he was running for his literal freedom, urging voters to return him to the presidency in part because the charges would only disappear if he was re-elected.For months, Trump’s overarching legal strategy was to delay the criminal cases until after Tuesday’s election. His hope was that if he won, he could appoint a loyalist attorney general who would simply drop the prosecutions.He was unsuccessful in delaying his New York criminal case tied to his efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 election through an unlawful hush-money scheme, which resulted in his conviction on 34 felony counts. But his conviction barely moved the political needle.The special counsel’s move to preemptively shut down the two federal cases comes as the former Trump attorney general William Barr in a statement urged federal and state prosecutors to end their cases against Trump.“The American people have rendered their verdict on President Trump and decisively chosen him to lead the country for the next four years. They chose him to lead us with the full knowledge of the claims against him by prosecutors around the country,” Barr wrote.“The attorney general and all the state prosecutors should do the right thing and help the country move forward by dismissing the cases.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Full presidential election results and map

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      ‘He could go to jail’: for Donald Trump, election day is also judgment day

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      Losing an election for the highest office is a crushing blow that no candidate forgets. But when the American electorate delivers its verdict next week, the personal stakes for Donald Trump will be uniquely high. His fate will hover between the presidency and the threat of prison.If he claims victory, Trump will be the first convicted criminal to win the White House and gain access to the nuclear codes. If he falls short, the 78-year-old faces more humiliating courtroom trials and potentially even time behind bars. It would be the end of a charmed life in which he has somehow always managed to outrun the law and duck accountability.For Trump, Tuesday is judgment day.“He branded himself as the guy who gets away with it,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, adding that, should he lose, “he is facing a lot of moments of reckoning. He could go to jail. He could end up considerably less wealthy than he is. No matter what happens, and no matter whether he wins or loses, there will be a reckoning over his health. Death, ill health, dementia – those are things even he can’t escape.”The property developer and reality TV star has spent his career pushing ethical and legal boundaries to the limit, facing countless investigations, court battles and hefty fines. Worthy of a novel, his has been a life of scandal on a gargantuan scale.In the 1970s Trump and his father were sued by the justice department for racial discrimination after refusing to rent apartments to Black people in predominantly white buildings. His property and casino businesses, including the Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza, filed for bankruptcy several times in the 1990s and early 2000s.Trump University, a business offering property training courses, faced multiple lawsuits for fraud, misleading marketing and false claims about the quality of its programmes. In 2016 Trump settled for $25m without admitting wrongdoing.View image in fullscreenThe Donald J Trump Foundation, a charitable organisation, was investigated and sued for allegedly using charitable funds for personal and business expenses. Trump eventually agreed to dissolve the foundation with remaining funds going to charity.Trump and his company were ordered to pay more than $350m in a New York civil fraud trial for artificially inflating his net worth to secure favourable loan terms. He is also known to have paid little to no federal income taxes in specific years which, although technically legal, was seen by some as bordering on unethical.But Trump became a fixture of the New York tabloids and hosted his own reality TV show, The Apprentice. Blair added: “His early realisation was that if you get famous, if you get large, people will get out of the way. He spent the first part of his career as a real estate developer, making himself seem the embodiment of enormous tycoon-level success even though, in fact, many things he did weren’t successful and his father kept bailing him out.“But he put across that impression and he rode that fame express that he had created for himself over a remarkable number of obstacles all the way to The Apprentice, which set him up permanently as the image of this unstoppable always-on-top tycoon and people are in awe of that. All of which could be described as branding.”Trump’s private life is no more savoury. Trump has reportedly cheated on all three of his wives. More than two dozen women have come forward with accusations of sexual misconduct against him, most recently the former model Stacey Williams, who told the Guardian that Trump groped her in 1993 as Jeffrey Epstein watched in what felt like a “twisted game” between the two men.During the 2016 election campaign, an Access Hollywood tape emerged in which Trump could be heard bragging about grabbing women by their private parts. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he said. “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Then last year a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing the columnist E Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5m.Trump’s presidency and its aftermath were no less morally compromised. He made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims over four years, according to a count by the Washington Post newspaper, spanning everything from the crowd size at his inauguration to the result of the 2020 election.View image in fullscreenHe became the first president to be impeached twice, first for withholding military aid to pressure Ukraine’s government to investigate his political opponents, then for instigating a coup on 6 January 2021 following his defeat. He also became the subject of not one but four criminal cases, any one of which would have been enough to scuttle the chances of any other White House hopeful.In May Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush-money payment to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels, making him the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes. Sentencing is scheduled for 26 November (the judge delayed it from 18 September after the Republican nominee asked that it wait until after the election).What was billed as the trial of the century has already begun to fade from public consciousness and played a relatively modest role in the election campaign. Jonathan Alter, a presidential biographer who was in court for every day of the trial, recalled: “I’ve covered some big stories over the years but there was nothing like the drama of watching the jury foreperson say, ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty’ 34 times and Donald Trump looking like he was punched in the gut.”Alter, who describes the experience in his new book, American Reckoning, reflects on how Trump has been able to act with impunity for so long. “It’s a combination of luck, galvanised defiance and the credulousness of a large chunk of the American people,” he said. “Demagoguery works. Playing on people’s fears works. It doesn’t work all the time but we can look throughout human history to political figures and how demagoguery and scapegoating ‘the other’ works.”Alter, who covered the trial for Washington Monthly magazine, added: “We’ve had plenty of demagogues, scoundrels and conmen in politics below the level of president. Trump has been lucky to escape accountability but the United States has been lucky that we haven’t had something like this before. The founders were very worried about it. They felt we would face something like this for sure.”The US’s system of checks and balances has been racing to keep up. Trump was charged by the special counsel Jack Smith with conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss to Joe Biden in the run-up to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. The former president and 18 others were also charged by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, with taking part in a scheme to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia.Trump was charged again by Smith with illegally retaining classified documents that included nuclear secrets, taken with him from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office in January 2021, and then obstructing government demands to give them back.With a such a caseload, it was widely assumed that Trump would spend this election shuttling between rallies one day and trials the next. But the courtroom campaign never really happened since, true to past form, he found ways to throw sand in the gears of the legal system and put off his moment of reckoning.View image in fullscreenOr he simply got lucky. In Georgia, it emerged that Willis had a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade, prompting demands that she be removed. Smith’s federal election case was thrown off track for months by a supreme court ruling that presidents have immunity for official actions taken in office. The classified documents case was thrown out by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, although Smith is appealing and the charges could be reinstated.Such delays have made it easier to forget just how much of an outlier Trump is. Past presidential brushes with the law consisted of Ulysses S Grant being fined for speeding his horse-drawn carriage in Washington and Harry Truman receiving a ticket for driving his car too slowly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1953. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached over the Watergate scandal and was subsequently pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.Meanwhile the standard for presidential aspirants has been high. Joe Biden’s first run for the White House fell apart amid allegations that he had plagiarised a speech by Britain’s Labour leader Neil Kinnock. During the 2000 campaign, a last-minute revelation that Republican candidate George W Bush had a drunk driving conviction that he concealed for 24 years generated huge headlines and was seen as a possible gamechanger. Hillary Clinton still blames her 2016 defeat on an FBI investigation into her email server that produced no charges.Trump, by contrast, once memorably boasted that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. He has done everything but yet still finds himself within touching distance of a second presidency.Indeed, he has repeatedly flipped the script, citing the cases against him as evidence that he is a martyr of sinister deep state forces. In this version it is Democrats, not Trump, who are the threat to democracy. Claiming solidarity with others who feel a sense a grievance, he often says: “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in the way.”The Georgia case produced the indelible image of Trump’s mugshot, with the former president staring defiantly at the camera. Within hours it had been transformed from a badge of shame into a literal badge for sale, along with posters, T-shirts and other merchandise that is still sported by his fans at rallies with slogans such as “Convicted felon” or “Never surrender”.View image in fullscreenJohn Bolton, a former national security adviser to Trump, said: “For reasons that I don’t understand, every time he gets indicted his poll numbers have gone up. The reason is people have very negative attitudes about Biden and they think he has weaponised the justice system – which I don’t think he’s done – but Trump has convinced people he’s a victim.“Every time he gets indicted again, he just uses it as more proof that he’s oppressed. It’s ridiculous but he has turned it. Like a good conman, he’s taken a seemingly impossible argument and made it worth a lot to him.”This judo move, turning the opponent’s weight against them, might explain why Democrats have not emphasised Trump’s criminal record to the degree that might once have been expected.Early on, the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, did shine a light on Trump’s misdemeanours, drawing a contrast with her past as a courtroom prosecutor by stating: “I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”The line drew cheers but was absent from her closing argument in Washington on Tuesday night, which focused instead on likening Trump to a “petty tyrant” who would sow chaos and division. Indeed, some have taken the view that even criminal convictions pale in significance compared with the threat of a would-be fascist.But Moe Vela, a lawyer and a former senior adviser to Biden when he was vice-president, said he wishes that Trump’s criminal past had been given greater emphasis by the Harris campaign. “I am extremely surprised we have not heard about that more,” he said. “He is a convicted felon. I thought it should have been said more often in the litany of grievances about him because I thought it was like low-hanging fruit.”Can Trump’s luck hold one more time? He has waged another White House campaign riven with extremism and racism, divisiveness and violent language, earning comparisons with fascists from the past. If elected, he is expected to use all the levers of power at his disposal to squash the outstanding cases against him; last week he boasted that he would fire his nemesis Smith “within two seconds” of becoming president. But if Trump is defeated by Harris, his legal perils will again gather like a dark cloud.Vela added: “If he loses this election, I pray to God that she does not in any way pardon him. I hope that our judicial system functions effectively and properly in taking all of these cases through to fruition. Some of them may come out where he is not convicted, but if conviction is the result, he should be punished just like anybody else. No one in this country is above the law.”That point was illustrated by the New York case, in which even a former president stood trial and was held to account. The system worked. Alter reflected: “That was very inspiring, the wisdom of the judge and jury, who took their responsibilities very seriously. It gave me a lump in my throat. It made me realise we’re not done.” More

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      Trump says he would fire Jack Smith ‘within two seconds’ of becoming president

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      Donald Trump said on Thursday he would order the immediate firing of the special counsel Jack Smith if he were re-elected in the November election in the clearest expression of his intent to shut down the two criminal cases brought against him.The remarks from Trump, who remains in a tight race for the presidency against Kamala Harris with 12 days until the election, came in a conversation with the conservative podcast host Hugh Hewitt, who asked whether Trump would pardon himself or fire the special counsel.“Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy … I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said of Smith, who last year charged the former president in Florida over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, and in Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Trump also said in the interview that he had been given immunity from the US supreme court, a reference to its ruling earlier this year that found former presidents are immune from prosecution for official actions related to the office of the presidency.The power to fire the special counsel formally rests with the attorney general, but Trump has made no secret of his intention to appoint a loyalist as attorney general who would agree to withdraw the justice department from the two pending criminal cases.Trump has previously tried to fire prosecutors who have investigated him personally. During his first term, he repeatedly tried to fire the special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Trump’s ties to Russian interference in the 2020 election.He ultimately backed off after the White House counsel, Don McGahn, disagreed with Trump’s attempts to fire Mueller and threatened to quit if Trump continued to press ahead with his order to shut down the Mueller investigation.Multiple current and former Trump advisers have suggested there would be no such hurdles in a second term. Trump, the advisers said, would simply call his loyalist attorney general to involve himself at the justice department as he wished, without pushback from career officials.Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team and the Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive, has repeatedly said anyone who wanted to join the second Trump administration – at the justice department or elsewhere – would need to be personally loyal to him.“This concept of doing what you want to do because I don’t think he’s right, throwing banana peels, you get fired in America, you get fired in every company,” Lutnick told Bloomberg TV last week.“Donald Trump loves conversation, he loves to get all sides of the idea. But then you make your choice and you go where the elected president of the United States goes,” Lutnick said. “Anybody who says otherwise – I don’t even know what they’re talking about, this is make-believe politics.”The Harris campaign said that Trump’s latest comments indicate he thinks he is above the law. The campaign also pointed to the former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly, who said he believed Trump met the definition of a fascist. Harris said she agreed with that statement. More

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      Trump January 6 case: five key points in the latest filing against former president

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      In a court filing unsealed on Wednesday, federal prosecutors argue that Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution over the January 6 riots because he acted in a private capacity, and took advice from private advisers.The indictment seeks to make this case – that Trump acted in his private capacity, rather than his official one – because of a US supreme court ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken as president.It also reveals further details about Trump’s alleged mood and actions (or lack of action) on the day, building on evidence that was provided in earlier briefs.In response to the new filing, the Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”. On Truth Social, Trump, writing in all-caps, called it “complete and total election interference.”Here are some key points made in the filing:‘Fundamentally a private’ schemeThe new court filing, in which Trump is referred to as “the defendant”, alleges that Trump’s plan that day was “fundamentally a private one”, and therefore not related to his duties as president but instead as a candidate for office.It reads: “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. Not so. Although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one.“He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”The filing looks back to election day for Trump’s use of private advisers: “As election day turned to November 4, the contest was too close to project a winner, and in discussions about what the defendant should say publicly regarding the election, senior advisors suggested that the defendant should show restraint while counting continued. Two private advisors, however, advocated a different course: [name redacted] and [name redacted] suggested that the defendant just declare victory. And at about 2.20am, the defendant gave televised remarks to a crowd of his campaign supporters in which he falsely claimed, without evidence or specificity, that there had been fraud in the election and that he had won.”On 4 January, the filing says, a White House counsel was excluded from a meeting during which Trump sought to pressure Pence to help overturn the election result. Only a private attorney was present, the filing says: “It is hard to imagine stronger evidence” than this that Trump’s conduct was private.A presidential candidate alone in a dining room with Twitter and Fox NewsTrump’s day on 6 January started at 1am, with a tweet pressuring Pence to obstruct the certification of the results. Seven hours later, at 8.17am, Trump tweeted about it again. Shortly before his speech at the Ellipse, Trump called Pence and again pressured him to “induce him to act unlawfully in the upcoming session”, where Pence would be certifying the election results. Pence refused.At this point, according to the filing, Trump “decided to re-insert into his campaign speech at the Ellipse remarks targeting Pence for his refusal to misuse his role in the certification”.Trump gave his speech, and at 1pm, the certification process began at the Capitol.Trump, meanwhile, “settled in the dining room off of the Oval Office. He spent the afternoon there reviewing Twitter on his phone, while the dining room television played Fox News’ contemporaneous coverage of events at the Capitol.”It was from the dining room that Trump watched a crowd of his supporters march towards the Capitol. He had been there less than an hour when, at “approximately 2.24pm, Fox News reported that a police officer may have been injured and that ‘protestors … have made their way inside the Capitol.’“At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted, writing, ‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!’”The filing reads: “The content of the 2.24pm tweet was not a message sent to address a matter of public concern and ease unrest; it was the message of an angry candidate upon the realization that he would lose power.”A minute later, the Secret Service evacuated Pence to a secure location.Trump, when told Pence had been evacuated, said: ‘So what?’The filing states that Trump said: “So what?” after being told that Pence had subsequently been taken to a secure location.The indictment notes that the government does not intend to use the exchange at trial. It argues, however, that the tweet itself was “unofficial”.The filing states that Pence “tried to encourage” Trump “as a friend” when news networks forecast a Biden win on 7 November. This again goes to the assertion that Trump acted in a private capacity.Pence allegedly told Trump: “You took a dying political party and gave it a new lease on life”.‘Fight like hell’ regardless The filing states Trump was overheard telling family members, amid his efforts to overturn the election results: “It doesn’t matter if you lose … you have to fight like hell.”“At one point long after the defendant had begun spreading false fraud claims, [name redacted] a White House staffer traveling with the defendant, overheard him tell family members: ‘It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.’”Trump knew his claims were falseThe filing states: “The evidence demonstrates that the defendant knew his fraud claims were false because he continued to make those claims even after his close advisors – acting not in an official capacity but in a private or campaign-related capacity – told them they were not true.”Among these advisers was a person referred to as P9, a White House staffer who had been one of several attorneys who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial in the Senate in 2019 and 2020, according to the filing.In one private conversation, “when P9 reiterated to the defendant that [name redacted] would be unable to prove his false fraud allegations in court, the defendant responded, ‘The details don’t matter.’”P9 at one point after the election told Trump “that the campaign was looking into his fraud claims, and had even hired external experts to do so, but could find no support for them.
      He told the defendant that if the Campaign took these claims to court, they would get slaughtered, because the claims are all ‘bullshit’.” More

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      Special counsel pushes to use Pence against Trump in 2020 election case

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      Special counsel prosecutors intend to make Donald Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence and his efforts to recruit fake electors the centerpiece of his criminal prosecution against the former president, according to a sprawling legal brief that was partly unsealed on Wednesday.The redacted brief, made public by the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan, shows prosecutors are relying extensively on Trump’s pressure campaign against Pence to support the charge that Trump conspired to obstruct the January 6 certification of the election results.And prosecutors used an equally voluminous portion of the 165-page brief to express their intent to use evidence of Trump trying to get officials in seven key swing states to reverse his defeat to support the charges that he conspired to disenfranchise American voters.The brief’s principal mission was to convince Chutkan to allow the allegations and evidence buttressing the superseding indictment against Trump to proceed to trial, arguing that it complied with the US supreme court’s recent ruling that gave former presidents immunity for official acts.As part of the ruling, the court ordered Chutkan to sort through the indictment and decide which of the allegations against Trump should be tossed because of the immunity rules and which could proceed to trial.The brief was the first round of that process that could take months to resolve and involve hearings to decide what allegations should be kept. Chutkan has the power to decide how much of the indictment can be kept and what evidence can be presented by prosecutors as she makes her decision.According to the redacted brief, prosecutors want to use Trump’s conversations with Pence in the lead-up to the January 6 Capitol attack, interactions between Trump and Pence and other private actors, as well as interactions between White House aides and private actors.The bottom line from prosecutors was that each of the episodes reflected Trump acting not as president but as a candidate for office, which meant the default presumption that conversations between Trump and Pence were official could be rebutted.For instance, prosecutors argued that evidence of Trump using personal lawyers Rudy Giuliani or John Eastman to pressure Pence should be permitted, since using private actors to commit a crime would not be an official act of the presidency or infringe on the functioning of the executive branch.At the White House on 4 January 2021, prosecutors wrote, Trump deliberately excluded his White House counsel from attending a meeting with Pence – meaning the only attorney in the room was Eastman.“It is hard to imagine stronger evidence that the conduct is private than when the president excludes his White House counsel and only wishes to have his private counsel present,” the brief said.View image in fullscreenAnd on a 5 January 2021 phone call, prosecutors wrote, Trump and Eastman were the only ones on the line to make a final effort to pressure Pence to drop his objections and agree not to count slates of electors for Joe Biden when he presided over the congressional certification the next day.“For the defendant’s decision to include private actors in the conversation with Pence about his role at the certification makes even more clear that there is no danger to the executive branch’s functions and authority, because it had no bearing on any executive branch authority,” it said.Prosecutors added that the conversations between Trump and Pence that they wanted to present at trial should be allowed because there was nothing official about them discussing electoral prospects as candidates for office.Referencing previously undisclosed evidence, prosecutors showed that Pence at various points suggested that “the process was over” and that Trump consider running again in 2024 – key evidence that Trump was on notice from his own running mate that he had lost the election.And prosecutors reiterated that charging the most damning evidence that Trump’s lawyers knew they were violating the law – emails where Eastman asked Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob to consider one more “minor violation” of the Electoral Count Act – did not impact the functioning of the executive branch.The expansive brief also included prosecutors asking to take to trial evidence of Trump’s effort to pressure state officials to reverse the results and his effort to then rely on fake slates of electors.The response from Trump’s lawyers is almost certain to be that Trump was calling state officials because he was executing the clause in the US constitution that the president has a duty to ensure the general election was run without interference or fraud.But prosecutors included a pre-emptive rebuttal: “Although countless federal, state, and local races also were on the same ballots … the defendant focused only on his own race, the election for president, and only on allegations favoring him as a candidate in targeted states he had lost.” More

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      Special counsel reveals new details of Trump bid to overturn 2020 election

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      Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” in a failed bid to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said in a newly unsealed court filing that argues that the former US president is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.The filing was unsealed on Wednesday. It was submitted by special counsel Jack Smith’s team following a supreme court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents and narrowed the scope of the prosecution.Trump’s legal team have employed a delaying strategy in all the numerous legal cases that Trump faces that has mostly been successful.The 165-page filing is probably the last opportunity for prosecutors to detail their case against Trump before the 5 November election given there will not be a trial before Trump faces the Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris.Prosecutors laid out details including an allegation that a White House staffer heard Trump tell family members that it did not matter if he won or lost the election, “you still have to fight like hell”.The new filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who, while losing his grip on the White House, “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process”.“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being alerted that his vice-president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a crowd of violent supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6.“The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges would not be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.The filing includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on 12 November 2020, in which Pence “reiterated a face-saving option” for Trump, telling him: “Don’t concede but recognize the process is over,” according to prosecutors.In another private lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024.“I don’t know, 2024 is so far off,” Trump told him, according to the filing.But Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states – including those in his own party – who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false,” prosecutors wrote.“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team wrote, adding: “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”Trump has pleaded not guilty to four criminal charges accusing him of a conspiracy to obstruct the congressional certification of the election, defraud the US out of accurate results and interfere with Americans’ voting rights.Prosecutors working with Smith divulged their evidence to make the case that the remaining allegations against Trump survive the US supreme court’s ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken as president.Prosecutors have said the filing will discuss new evidence, including transcripts of witness interviews and grand jury testimony, but much of that material will not be made public until a trial.Senior officials in Trump’s administration including the former vice-president Mike Pence and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows appeared before the grand jury during the investigation.Prosecutors submitted the court filing on Thursday, but US district judge Tanya Chutkan had to approve proposed redactions before it was made public.Trump’s lawyers opposed allowing Smith to issue a sweeping court filing laying out their evidence, arguing it would be inappropriate to do so weeks before the election. They have argued the entire case should be tossed out based on the supreme court’s ruling.Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and Democrats were “hell-bent on weaponizing the justice department in an attempt to cling to power”.“The release of the falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine American Democracy and interfere in this election.”The US presidential election is a neck-and-neck contest, with Harris establishing a slight but solid lead over Trump in most national voting surveys. The picture in the all-important swing states is more complex, however, as tight races in these key contests will decide the election.If Trump wins the election, he is likely to direct the justice department to drop the charges.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More