Jack - Reading the Annotated Immunity Brief | Part 1

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Sit back and enjoy smooth legal writing of Jack Smith as read by Allison Gill.Part 1Thank you to Adam Klasfeld for filling in the redacted names.Who's Who in Jack Smith's Immunity Brief Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M-S-W Media. I signed an order appointing Jack Smith. And nobody knows you. And those who say Jack is a finesse. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. Wait, what law have I moved? The events leading up to and on January 6th. Classified documents and other presidential records.

You understand what prison is? Send me to jail. Hello, and welcome to Jack, the podcast about all things special counsel. My name is Alison Gill, and I'm going to read Jack's. Smith's immunity brief annotated. That means I'll be reading the names of the people who are redacted, the people who are co-conspirators, the companies that are redacted, and the names of the individual people that are involved in this case. And thanks to our friend Adam Klassfeld at Just Security for providing a key to the list of redacted names. Please subscribe to the Jack podcast for free

wherever you get your podcasts for the latest news and analysis of both of Jack Smith's federal investigations against Donald Trump. Government's motion for immunity determinations. 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. Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant

acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt through fraud and deceit the government function by which votes are collected and counted, a function in which the defendant, as president, has no official role. In Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court held that presidents are immune from prosecution for certain official conduct, including the defendant's use of the Justice Department in furtherance of his scheme, as was alleged in the original indictment, and remanded to this court to determine whether the remaining allegations against the defendant are immunized. The answer to that question is no. This motion provides a comprehensive account of the defendant's private criminal conduct, sets forth the legal framework,

created by Trump for resolving immunity claims, applies that framework to establish that none of the defendant's charge conduct is immunized because it either was unofficial or any presumptive immunity is rebutted, and it requests the relief the government seeks, which is at bottom this, that the court determined that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes, as would any other citizen. This motion provides the framework for conducting the, quote, necessarily fact-bound, unquote, immunity analysis required by the Supreme Court's remand order.

It proceeds in four parts. Section 1 provides a detailed statement of the case that the government intends to prove a trial. This includes the conduct alleged in the superseding indictment, as well as other categories of evidence that the government intends to present in its case in chief. This detailed statement reflects the Supreme Court's ruling that presidential immunity contains an evidentiary component, which should be, quote, addressed at the outset of a proceeding, unquote. Section 2 sets forth the legal principles governing claims of presidential immunity. It explains that, for each category of conduct that the Supreme Court has not yet addressed, this court should first determine whether it was official or unofficial by analyzing. the relevant content form and context to determine whether the defendant was acting in his official capacity or instead, quote, in his capacity as a candidate for re-election, citing Blasengame v. Trump. Where the defendant was acting as office seeker, not office holder, no immunity attaches.

For any conduct deemed official, the court should next determine whether the presumption of immunity is rebutted, which requires the government to show that, quote, applying a criminal prohibition to the act would pose no danger of intrusion on the authority and functions of the executive branch. That is citing Trump. Section 3 then applies those legal principles to the defendant's conduct and establishes that nothing the government intends to present to the jury is protected by presidential immunity. Although the defendant's discussion with the vice president about, quote, their official responsibilities, qualifies as official, the government rebuts the presumption of immunity. And all of the defendant's

remaining conduct was unofficial, as content form and context show. The defendant was acting in his capacity as a candidate for re-election, not in his capacity as president. In the alternative, if any of this conduct were deemed official, the government could rebut the presumption of immunity. And then finally, Section 4 explains the relief sought by the government and specifies the findings the court should make in a single order, namely that the defendant's conduct set forth in Section 1 is not immunized, and that as a result, the defendant must stand trial on the superseding indictment, and the government is not prohibited at trial from using evidence of the conduct described in Section 1.

Section 1. Factual Proffer When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crime, to try to stay in office. 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, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, known as the targeted states. His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts, manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states, attempting to enlist Vice President Michael R. Pence in his role as president of the Senate to obstruct Congress's

certification of the election by using the defendant's fraudulent electoral votes. And when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification. The through line of these efforts was deceit. The defendants and co-conspirators knowingly false claims of election fraud. They used these lies in furtherance of three conspiracies. One, a conspiracy to interfere with the federal government function by which the nation collects and counts election results, which is set forth in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act, the ECA.

Two, a conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding in which Congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election. And three, a conspiracy against the rights of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted. At its core, the defendant's scheme was a private criminal effort. In his capacity as a candidate, the defendant used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process, which through the Constitution, ECA, and state laws includes the state's notification to the federal government of the selection of their representative electors based on the popular vote in the state. The meeting of those electors to cast their votes consistent with the popular vote and Congress's counting of the electoral votes as a certification proceeding. As set forth in detail below, the defendant worked with private co-conspirators, including private attorneys, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Ken Chesbrough, and private political operatives, Boris Epstein, and Steve Bannon.

The defendant also relied heavily on private agents such as his campaign employees and volunteers, like campaign manager Bill Steppium, deputy campaign manager Justin Clark, senior campaign advisor Jason Miller, and campaign operative Mike Roman. in this section the government sets forth detailed facts supporting the charges against the defendant before addressing in the next section why none of this conduct is subject to immunity under the Supreme Court's decision in Trump. The conduct set forth below includes the defendant's formation of the conspiracies leading up to and immediately following the 2020 presidential election. Certain information regarding his knowledge that there had not been outcome determinative fraud in the election, as he persistently claimed, and his increasingly desperate efforts to use knowingly false claims of election fraud to disrupt the electoral process. The government does not consider any of the following conduct to be subject to immunity

for the reasons set forth in Section 3. Formation of the conspiracies. Although his multiple conspiracies began after Election Day in 2020, the defendant laid the groundwork for his crimes well before, then. Leading into the election, the defendant's private campaign advisors, including Roger Stone, then a private citizen, and Bill Steppian, the defendant's campaign manager, informed him that it would be a close contest and he was unlikely to be finalized on election day, in part because of the time needed to process large numbers of mail-in ballots prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

They also told the defendant that the initial returns on election night might be misleading. That is, he might take an early lead in the vote count that would diminish as mail-in ballots were counted because his own supporters favored in-person voting, while supporters of his opponent, Joseph R. Biden, favored mail-in ballots. Privately, the defendant told advisors, including Roger Stone, campaign personnel, a White House staffer P-7, and Mark Short, the Vice President's Chief of Staff, said that in such a scenario, he would simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted, and any winner was projected. Publicly, the defendant began to plant the seeds for that false declaration. In the months leading up to the election, he refused to say whether he would accept the election results. Instead, he insisted that he could lose the election only because of fraud, falsely claimed that mail-in ballots were inherently fraudulent,

and asserted that only votes counted by election day were valid. For instance, in an interview on July 19th, 2020, when asked repeatedly if he would accept the results of the election, the defendant said he would, quote, have to see, end quote, it depends. On July 30th, despite having voted by mail himself earlier that year, the defendant suggested that widespread mail-in voting provided cause for delaying the election, tweeting, quote, with universal mail-in voting, not absentee voting, which is good, 2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history. it will be a great embarrassment to the USA, delay the election until people can properly, securely, and safely vote. In an interview on August 2nd, the defendant claimed without any basis that, quote, there is no way you can go through the mail-in vote without massive cheating. At a campaign event in Wisconsin on August 17th, the defendant told his supporters, quote,

the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. Remember that. It's the only way we're going to lose this election. so we have to be very careful. In his acceptance speech at the RNC Republican National Convention on August 24th, the defendant said the only way they could take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election. On October 27th during remarks regarding his campaign,

the defendant said, quote, it would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate. And I don't believe that's by our list. laws. I don't believe that. So we'll see what happens. The defendant said this despite, or perhaps because his private advisors had informed him that it was unlikely that the winner of

the election would be declared on November 3rd. By October 2020, Steve Bannon, a private political advisor who had worked for the defendant's 2016 presidential campaign, began to assist with the defendant's re-election effort. Three days before election day, Bannon described the defendant's plan to a private gathering of supporters. Quote, and what Trump's going to do is just declare victory, right? He's going to declare victory. That doesn't mean he's the winner. He's just going to say he's the winner, unquote.

After explaining that Biden's supporters favored voting by mail, Bannon stated further, quote, and so they're going to have a natural disadvantage, and Trump's going to take advantage of it. That's our strategy. He's going to declare himself the winner, unquote. Immediately following election day on November, third, the defendant did exactly that. As his private and campaign advisors had predicted to him,

in certain states, the defendant took an early lead on Election Day that began to erode. At approximately 11.20 p.m., Fox News projected that Biden would prevail in the state of Arizona. And according to campaign advisor Jason Miller, he and the defendant were shocked and angry at this development. As Election Day turned to November 4th, 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. But two private advisors advocated a different course. Rudy Giuliani and Boris Epstein suggested that the defendant just declare victory. And at about 220 a.m., 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. Quote, this is a fraud on the American people. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election, unquote. In the immediate post-election period, while the defendant claimed fraud without proof, his private operative sought to create chaos rather than seek clarity at polling places where states were continuing to tabulate votes. For example, on November 4th, Mike Roman, a campaign employee, agent and a co-conspirator of the defendant tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan looked unfavorable for the defendant. There, when a colleague

at the TCF Center told Mike Roman, quote, we think a batch of votes heavily in Biden's favor is right. Mike Roman responded, find a reason it isn't. Give me options to file litigation, even if it's BS. When the colleague suggested that there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers riot, which was a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, Mike Roman responded, make them riot, do it. The defendant's campaign operatives and supporters used similar tactics at other tabulation centers, including Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the defendant sometimes used the resulting confrontations to falsely claim that his election observers were being denied proper access,

thus serving as a predicate to the defendant's claim that fraud must have occurred in the observer's absence. Contrary to the defendant's public claims of victory immediately following election day, his advisors informed him that he would likely lose. On November 7th, in a private campaign meeting that included Stepion, Clark, and Miller, and White House staffer Hirschman, who came to serve as a conduit for information, from the campaign to the defendant.

Campaign staff told the defendant that he only had a slim chance of prevailing in the election and that any potential success was contingent on the defendant winning all ongoing vote counts or litigation in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Within a week of that assessment

on November 13th, the defendant's campaign conceded its litigation in Arizona, meaning that based on his campaign advisor's previous assessments, the defendant had lost the election. the same day, in an implicit acknowledgement that he had no lawful way to prevail, the defendant sidelined the existing campaign staff responsible for mounting his legal election challenges. From Stepion and Clark and others who were telling the defendant the truth that he did not want to hear, that he had lost, the defendant turned to Rudy Giuliani,

a private attorney who was willing to falsely claim victory and spread knowingly false claims of election fraud. As the defendant placed alternating phone calls to Clark and Giuliani throughout November 13th, Steve Bannon informed Boris Epstein, another private campaign advisor, of the change, writing, quote, close hold, don't tell anyone. Trump just fired Clark and put Giuliani in charge. And, quote, you are to report to Giuliani. When Epstein asked if Stepion was gone too, Bannon replied that, quote, they all report to Giuliani.

and Bannon had, quote, made a recommendation directly that if Giuliani was not in charge, this thing is over. Trump is in to the end. The next day, consistent with Bannon's description, the defendant announced his staff change by tweet, writing, I look forward to Giuliani spearheading the legal effort to defend our right to a free and fair election. Rudy Giuliani, Joe de Genova, Victoria Tonzing, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, a truly great team added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives, unquote. We'll be right back with the section on how Donald Trump knew his claims of outcome determinative fraud were false. Stick around. We'll be right back. The defendant knew that his

claims of outcome determinative fraud were false. Following election day and throughout the charged conspiracies, the defendant, his co-conspirators and their agents spread lies that there had been outcome determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These lies included dozens of specific claims that there had been substantial fraud in certain states, such as that large numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that voting machines had changed votes for the defendant to votes for Biden. And the defendant and co-conspirators continued to make these unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing claims even after they had been publicly disproven or after advisors had directly informed the

defendant that they were untrue. 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 him they were not true. These advisors included Hirschman, the White House staffer in campaign conduit, and Pence, the defendant's running mate. Hirschman's relationship with the defendant began before Hirschman worked for him in the White House. Hirschman had known Kushner, Jared Kushner, the defendant's son-in-law, since

Kushner was a child, and through Kushner, met Ivanka Trump and then the defendant. Hirschman was one of several attorneys who represented the defendant in his first impeachment trial in the Senate in 2019 and 2020, including presenting argument on the Senate floor on January 27th, 2020. Hirschman began working in the White House as an assistant to the president in August of 2020. In October of 2020, Hirschman became interested in learning more about the defendant's campaign, and in early November 2020, after he had began interfacing with campaign staff, Hirschman consulted with White House Counsel's office to ensure he complied with any applicable

laws regarding campaign activity. Thereafter and throughout the post-election period, Hirschman became a very much. a conduit of information from the campaign to the defendant and over the course of the conspiracies. Hirschman told the defendant the unvarnished truth about his campaign legal team and the claims of fraud that they and the defendant were making. Examples of these instances include. Hirschman repeatedly gave the defendant his honest assessment that Giuliani could not mount successful legal challenges to the election. For instance, when the defendant told Hirschman that he was going to put Rudy in charge of the campaign's legal efforts, but pay him only if he succeeded,

Hirschman told the defendant he would never have to pay Giuliani anything. In response, the defendant laughed and said, we'll see. Thereafter, in the Oval Office meetings with the defendant, Rudy and others, in which Rudy made speculative claims, Hirschman told Rudy in front of the defendant that Rudy would be unable to prove his allegations in a courtroom. In a separate private conversation, when Hirschman reiterated to the defendant that Rudy would be unable to prove his false fraud allegations in court, the defendant responded, quote, the details don't matter. In the post-election period, Hirschman also took the role of updating the defendant on a near daily basis of the campaign's unsuccessful efforts to support fraud claims. Herschman told the defendant 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 bullshit. Hirschman was privy in real time to the findings of the two expert consulting firms the campaign retained to investigate fraud claims.

and Company 1 and Company 2 discussed with the defendant, those are the two companies that were hired to investigate fraud claims, discussed with the defendant their debunkings on all major claims. For example, Hirschman told the defendant that Georgia's audit disproved claims that Dominion had altered votes. In the post-election time period, Pence, the defendant's own running mate, who he had directed to assess fraud allegations, Pence told the defendant that he had seen no evidence of outcome determinative fraud in the election.

This was one of the many conversations the defendant and Pence had as running mates in which they discussed their shared electoral interests. Pence gradually and gently tried to convince the defendant to accept the lawful results of the election, even if it meant they lost. These conversations included a conversation November 4th in which the defendant asked Pence to study up claims of voter fraud and states they had won together in 2016 to deterred. determine whether they could bring legal challenges as candidates in those states. Pence described the conversation as follows, quote,

well, I think it was broadly, it was just look at all of it. Let me know what you think. But he told me that the campaign was going to fight, was going to court and make challenges. And then he just said, we're going to fight this and take a look at it. Let me know what you think. A call between the defendant and Pence on November 7th, the day that media organizations began to project Biden as the winner of the election, Pence, quote, tried to encourage the defendant as a friend, reminding him, quote,

you took a dying political party and gave it a new lease on life. On November 11th, in a meeting among the defendant, Pence, campaign staff and some White House staff, during which Pence asked when most of the lawsuits would be resolved, quote, when does this come to a head? And the campaign staff responded, quote, the week after Thanksgiving. A November 12th meeting among the defendant, Pence, campaign staff, and some White House staff during which Pence recalls, quote, campaign lawyers gave a sober and somewhat pessimistic report on the state of election challenges. A private lunch on November 12th in which Pence reiterated, a face-saving option for Trump, quote, don't concede but recognize process is over. A private lunch on November 16th in which Pence tried to encourage the defendant to accept the results of the election and, run again in 2024, to which the defendant responded, quote, I don't know,

2024 is so far off. A November 23rd phone call in which the defendant told Pence that the defendant's private attorney was not optimistic about the election challenges. A December 21st private lunch in which Pence encouraged the defendant, quote, not to look at the election as a loss, just an intermission. This was followed later that day by a private conversation in the Oval Office in which the defendant asked Pence, what do you think we should do? Pence said, quote, after we have exhausted every legal process in the courts and Congress, if we still come up short, you should take a bow. There were discussions in which Pence apprised the defendant of conversations he had had with governors in Arizona and Georgia in the context of election challenges, in which

Pence had called the governors, quote, simply to gather information and share it with the president, and in which the governors did not report evidence of fraud. in the elections in their states and explained that they could not take action to convene their state legislatures. But the defendant disregarded Hirschman and Pence in the same way that he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected he 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 lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false. election officials, for instance, issued press releases and other public statements to combat the disinformation that the defendant and allies were spreading. At one point, long after the defendant had begun false claims, Nick Luna, a White House staffer traveling with the defendant, overheard him tell family members, quote, it doesn't matter if you won or lost the election. You

still have to fight like hell. The defendant and his co-conspirators also demonstrated their deliberate disregard for the truth and thus their knowledge of falsity when they repeatedly changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day. At trial, the government will introduce several instances of this pattern in which the defendant and conspirators' lies were proved by the fact that they made up figures from whole cloth. One example concerns the defendant and conspirators claims about non-citizen voters in Arizona. The conspirators started with the allegation that 36,000 non-citizens voted in Arizona. Five days later, it was, quote, beyond credulity that a few hundred thousand didn't vote.

Three weeks later, quote, the bare minimum was 40 or 50,000. The reality is, quote, about 250,000. Days after that, the assertion was 32,000. And ultimately, the conspirators landed back where they started at 36,000, a false figure they never verified or corroborated. Ultimately, the defendant's study stream of disinformation in the post-election period culminated in the speech he gave

at the privately funded, privately organized rally at the ellipse on the morning of January 6th, 2021, in advance of the official proceeding in which Congress was to certify the election in favor of Biden. In his speech, the defendant repeated the same lies about election fraud in Arizona,

Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, that had been publicly or directly debunked. The defendant used these lies to inflame and motivate the large angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceedings. Everybody will be right back after this quick break. The defendant aimed deceit at the targeted states to alter their ascertainment and appointment of electors. Shortly after election day, the defendant began to target the electoral process at the state level

by attempting to deceive state officials and prevent or overturn the legitimate ascertainment and appointment of Biden's electors. As president, the defendant had no official responsibilities related to the state's administration of the election or the appointment of their electors and instead contacted state officials in his capacity as a candidate. Tellingly, the defendant contacted only state officials who were in his political party and were his political supporters and only in states he had lost. The defendant attempted to use deceit to target the state's electoral process played out in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as well as across other states that used certain voting machines.

In addition to the following evidence of the defendant's conduct during the charged conspiracies, at trial, the government will elicit testimony from election officials from the targeted states to establish the objective falsity and often impossibility of the defendant's fraud claims. Notably, although these election officials would have been the best sources of information to determine whether there was any merit to specific allegations of election fraud in their states, the defendant never contacted any of them to ask. Arizona. The defendant was on notice that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud in Arizona within a week of the election. On November 9th, for instance, two days after news networks projected that Biden had won, the defendant called Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to ask him what,

was happening at the state level with the presidential vote count in Arizona. At that point, though Fox News had projected that Biden had won the state, several other news outlets, including ABC, NBC, CNN and the New York Times had not yet made a projection. Doug Deucey walked the defendant through the margins and the votes remaining to be counted, which were primarily from Pima County, which favored Biden and Maricopa County, which was split. Doug Deucy described the situation to the defendant as, quote, the ninth inning, two outs, and you're down several runs, unquote. The defendant also raised claims of election fraud,

and Doug Deucy asked the defendant to send him supporting evidence. Although the defendant said he would, stating, quote, were packing it up, unquote, he never did. Shortly thereafter, on November 13th, campaign manager Bill Steppian told the defendant directly that a false fraud claim that had been circulating that a substantial number of non-citizens had voted in Arizona was false.

The same day, as noted previously, campaign attorneys conceded in court that the remaining election lawsuit in Arizona was moot. The defendant and Rudy Giuliani continued to try to influence Doug Deucy. For example, Giuliani tried to contact Doug Deucy on November 22nd. The same day the defendant and Giuliani reached out to the Arizona Speaker of the House, as described below. And on November 30th, the day Doug Deucy signed the Arizona certificate of ascertainment, formally declaring Biden's electors as the legitimate electors for Arizona,

Doug Deucy received a call from the defendant and Pence. Doocy advised them that Arizona had certified the election. When the defendant brought up fraud claims, Deucy, eager to see the evidence, again asked the defendant to provide it. But the defendant never did. Instead, later that evening and into the following morning, the defendant repeatedly publicly attacked Doug Deucy,

as well as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on Twitter, retweeting posts by others such as, quote, Who needs Democrats when you have Republicans like Kemp and Ducey? Watching the Arizona hearings and then watching Ducey sign those papers, why bother voting for Republicans if what you get is Ducey and Kemp? Kemp said, my state ran the most corrupt election in American history, right? Doocy, hold my beer. And why is Ducey still pretending he's a member of the Republican Party

after he just certified fraudulent election results in Arizona that disenfranchised millions of Republicans, unquote. The defendant and co-conspirators also attempted to use false fraud claims to convince political allies in Arizona in the state legislature to ignore the popular vote and appoint illegitimate electors. On November 22nd, Trump and Rudy called Bowers, Rusty Bowers, the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives. Giuliani did most of the talking.

During a call, Trump and Giuliani leveled multiple false fraud claims, including non-citizen, non-residents and dead voters that affect the defendant's race and asked Rusty Bowers to use them as a basis to call the state legislature into session to replace Arizona's legitimate electors with illegitimate ones for the defendant. When Bowers voiced his deep skepticism, Rudy said, quote, well, you know, we're all kind of Republicans and we need to be working together. Bowers refused and asked Rudy to provide evidence supporting his fraud claims and Giuliani never did.

Indeed, Giuliani met with Bowers in person approximately a week later and still had nothing to back up his claims. On November 30th, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, along with others, arrived in Arizona for a, quote, hotel hearing, an unofficial meeting with Republican legislators during which they promoted false fraud allegations.

In a meeting that day after the hearing when legislators pressed Rudy and Ellis for evidence to support their claims, Rudy conceded that even on this late date, quote, we don't have evidence, but we have a lot of theories, unquote. When the legislators were frustrated that Giuliani had no support for his claims

and asked him tough questions, Giuliani expressed surprise at the way he was being treated, stating, quote, man, I thought we were all Republicans. This is a little more hostile of a reception. I'm amazed at the reception I'm getting here. On December 4th, Rusty Bowers released a public statement in which he explained that he did not have the authority to use the legislature, quote, to reverse the results of the election,

and that doing so would constitute an attempt, quote, to nullify the people's vote based on unsupported theories of fraud. Rusty Bowers made clear that he was disappointed with the legitimate election results because, quote, he voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him, but, quote, would not violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election. On Twitter, Christina Bob, a campaign staffer who worked with Boris Epstein, attacked Rusty Bowers for his statement, writing that Bowers, quote, is intentionally misleading the people of Arizona to avoid the inevitable. The defendant retweeted Christina Bob's false post and then praised her.

A month later, just two days before January 6th, John Eastman, another of the defendant's private attorneys and a co-conspirator, called Rusty Bowers. And Rusty Bowers' lawyer and urged them one last time to use the legislature to decertify Arizona's legitimate electors and overturn a valid election results. When Bowers told Eastman there was no evidence of substantial fraud in Arizona and that he could not legally call the legislature into session, Eastman was undeterred. He conceded that, quote, he didn't know enough about the facts on the ground regarding fraud in Arizona, but said that Bowers should nonetheless falsely claim that he had the authority to convene the legislature and then, quote, let the courts sort it out. Rusty Bowers again refused. In the post-election period, Bowers was harassed.

Rast on several occasions, individuals gathered outside his home with bullhorns and screamed and honked their vehicle horns to create noise. Once, an individual in visible possession of a pistol and wearing a t-shirt in support of a militia group came to Bauer's property and screamed at him. At the time of these events, Bauer's daughter was at home and was very ill and the noise caused her disruption and angst. We need to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with the pressure campaign on Georgia. Georgia. The defendant had an early notice that his claims of election fraud in Georgia were false. Around mid-November, campaign advisor Jason Miller told the defendant that his claim

that a large number of dead people had voted in Georgia was false. The defendant continued to press the claim anyway, including an oppressed appearance on November 29th, when he suggested that a large enough number of dead voters had cast ballots to change the outcome of the election in Georgia. Four days later, on December 3rd, Rudy Giuliani orchestrated a presentation to a judiciary subcommittee of the Georgia State Senate. In the morning in advance of it, Giuliani had spoken to the defendant on the phone for almost 20 minutes. And at the hearing, Giuliani arranged for co-conspirators and agents to repeat the false dead voter claim. The claim was so patently false that everyone around the defendant knew it. During the hearing, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Hirschman exchanged text messages on their personal phones

confirming that a campaign attorney had verified that Rudy Giuliani's claim of more than 10,000 dead voters was false, and that the actual number was around 12 and could not be outcome determinative. During the subcommittee hearing, the conspirators also set in motion a sensational and dangerous lie about election workers at State Farm Arena that would result in the defendant's supporters harassing and threatening workers. First, one of the defendant's private attorneys claimed that more than 10,000 dead people had voted in Georgia. Next, an agent of the defendant played misleading excerpts of a closed circuit camera footage from State Farm Arena and insinuated that it showed election workers committing misconduct counting suitcases of illegal ballots. Lastly, based on the false fraud allegations,

John Eastman, who had already been engaged as a private lawyer for the defendant but did not disclose that at the hearing, encouraged the Georgia legislators to decertify the state's legitimate electors. While the hearing was ongoing, the defendant simultaneously amplified the misinformation about the state farm arena election workers, falsely tweeting, wow, blockbuster testimony taking place right now in Georgia, ballot stuffing by Dems when Republicans were forced to leave the large counting room, plunting more coming, but this alone leads to an easy win of the state, unquote.

He did this just after retweeting two of his campaign accounts tweets that promoted this false claim about the election workers at State Farm Arena. Over the next week, the claim of misconduct at State Farm Arena was disproven publicly, as well as directly to the defendant. The day after the hearing, Gabriel Sterling, that's the chief. Chief Operating Officer of the Georgia Secretary of State's office posted a tweet, explaining that Secretary of State had watched the video in its entirety and confirmed that it showed normal ballot processing. Sterling again forcefully debunked the conspirator's claims about the

state farm video in a press conference on December 7th, explaining at length the election worker's innocent conduct depicted in the closed circuit camera footage stating, quote, and what's really frustrating is the president's attorneys had this same videotape. They saw the exact same things the rest of us could see, and they chose to mislead state senators and the public about what was on the video. I'm quite sure that they will not characterize the video if they try to enter it into evidence because that's the kind of thing that could lead to sanctions because it's obviously untrue. They knew it was untrue, and they continued to do things like this, unquote. On December 8th, the defendant called Georgia Attorney General Carr.

Carr had advanced notice that the topic of the call was Texas v. Pennsylvania, an election lawsuit in which Texas was suing other states, including Georgia, to attempt to prevent the certification of the election. U.S. Senator Purdue told Carr that the defendant had heard that Carr was, quote, whipping or lobbying other state attorneys general against filing amicus briefs in support of Texas. Carr was not lobbying against the suit and told Purdue. So Purdue asked Carr if he would speak with the defendant about it, and Carr agreed. Shortly thereafter, Trump called Carr and immediately raised Texas v. Pennsylvania, saying, quote, I hope you're not talking to your AGs and

encouraging them not to get on the lawsuit. Carr told the defendant he was not affirmatively calling other state attorneys general, but if they called him, he was telling them what he was seeing in his state, which was something that the defendant probably did not want to hear. Carr was just not seeing evidence of fraud in Georgia. The defendant nonetheless raised various fraud claims. Carr told him that state authorities had investigated the state farm arena allegations and found no wrongdoing, and that he thought another claim the defendant raised about Coffey County had been similarly resolved, but would check.

The defendant asked Carr to look at them again, quote, because we're running out of time, unquote. Carr tried to steer the call to an end by thanking the defendant and telling them that he voted for him twice and appreciated the defendant to which the defendant responded, yeah, I did a hell of a job, didn't I? At one point, the defendant raised with Carr the impending runoff election of Georgia's U.S. Senate seats and how important it was to reelect Purdue and Laughler. The day after the call, the defendant in his private capacity as candidate for president intervened in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, and his attorney for that matter was John Eastman. On the same day as the defendant's call with Carr, the defendant's campaign staff acknowledged

that the State Farm Arena claim was unsupported, emailing one another about the fact that the television networks may decline to run campaign ads promoting it. In frustration regarding the claim and others like it, Jason Miller, who spoke with the defendant on a daily basis and had informed him on multiple occasions that various fraud claims were false, he wrote, Quote, quote, when our research and campaign legal team can't back up any of the claims made by our elite strike force legal team, you can see why we're 0 for 32 on our cases. All obviously hustled to help on all fronts, but it's tough to own any of this when it's all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership, unquote. On December 10th, however, Rudy Giuliani further perpetuated the false state farm arena claim when he appeared at another hearing. this one before the Georgia House of Representatives' Government Affairs Committee.

During it, he displayed some of the same footage and had been used in the December 3rd hearing that had been debunked in the interim by Georgia officials, and nonetheless claimed that it showed, quote, voter fraud right in front of people's eyes. He then named two election workers, Seamus and her mother, Ruby Freeman, and baselessly accused them of, quote, quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine, and suggested that they were criminals whose, quote, places of work, their homes should have been searched for evidence of ballots, for evidence of USB ports, for evidence of voter fraud. As these false claims about Freeman and Moss spread, the women were barraged by

racist death threats. In the year since, they have spoken about the effect of the defendant and co-conspirators lies about them. As Freeman explained in an interview with congressional investigators, quote, when someone as powerful as the president of the United States, eggs on a mob, that mob will come. They came for us with their cruelty, their threats, their racism, and their hats. They haven't stopped even today. Indeed, to this day, the defendant has never stopped falsely attacking Freeman and Moss. Although none of the false claims against them were ever corroborated,

the defendant has continued to levy them on social media, including when the defendant attacked Freeman in a January 2023, post just after her testimony to congressional investigators was made public. Throughout the post-election period, the defendant used Twitter to publicly attack Georgia Governor Brian Kemp with particular aggression. In the 35 days between November 30th, 2020 and January 3rd, 2021, the defendant tweeted critically about Kemp by name or title more than 40 times. These tweets included the ones also attacking Doug Ducey described above, as well as other particulars

to Kemp like, quote, why won't Kemp the hapless governor of Georgia use his emergency powers, which can be easily done to overrule his obstinate Secretary of State and do a match of signatures on envelopes? It will be a gold mine of fraud and we will easily win the state, unquote. Quote, I will easily and quickly win Georgia if Governor Kemp or the Secretary of State permit a simple signature verification has not been done and will show large-scale discrepancies. Why are these two Republicans saying no? If we win Georgia, everything else falls in place.

And the Republican governor of Georgia refuses to do signature verification, which would give us an easy win. What's wrong with this guy? What is he hiding? And how does Governor Kemp allow certification of votes without verifying signatures? And despite the recently released tapes of ballots being stuffed, his poll numbers have dropped like a rock. He is finished as governor, unquote.

In the post-election period, the defendant also made false claims in court about fraud. in Georgia unsuccessfully. For example, in Trump v. Kemp, a federal lawsuit in which the defendant sued Georgia's governor and secretary of state, the defendant signed a verification of fraud allegations that he and his attorney on the case John Eastman

knew was inaccurate. Hirschman spoke with the defendant and Eastman in late December regarding the proposed verification. First, he told Eastman and another private attorney, Cleet Mitchell, that they could not have the defendant sign it because they couldn't verify any of the facts.

And Hirschman told the defendant that any lawyer that signed the complaint that the verification supported would get disbarred. Eastman acknowledged the problem in an email on December 31st to lead counsel for the defendant as candidate in Trump v. Kemp and another private attorney writing that in this time since the defendant signed the previous verification in the case, quote, he had been made aware that some of the allegations and evidence proffered by the experts has been inaccurate, unquote. and that signing a new affirmation, quote, with the knowledge and incorporation by reference would not be accurate, unquote. Nonetheless, on December 31st, the defendant signed the verification and John Eastman caused it to be filed.

On January 2nd, Georgia's secretary of state Brad Raffensberger appeared on Fox News and said that various rumors of election fraud were false and that the defendant had lost in Georgia. Quote, our office has been very busy with what I call the rumor whackamole, every day a rumor will pop up and then we whack it down. What we do is we basically whack it down with the truth.

And people can't handle the truth sometimes because they're very disappointed in the results. And I get that. I voted for Trump also. But at the end of the day, we did everything we could. We did an audit of the race. President Trump still lost. Then we did a full recount. President Trump still lost.

We had a safe and secure process. Raffensberger, like Kemp, had been on the receiving end of the defendant's tweets. These included, quote, why isn't the Secretary of State so-called Republican allowing us to look at signatures on envelopes for verification? We will find tens of thousands of fraudulent and illegal votes. Rhinos, Kemp, and Duncan, and Secretary of State Raffensberger will be solely responsible for the potential loss of our two great senators from Georgia, Purdue and Loughler, won't call a special session or check for signature verification. People are angry in Georgia. Where is the signature verification approval? What do you have to lose?

must move quickly. Kemp and Duncan, go do it. Shortly after seeing the interview, the defendant set up a call with Raffensberger to discuss his pending private lawsuit, Trump v. Kemp, in which Raffensberger was named as a defendant. For this reason, Raffensberger first hoped to avoid speaking with the defendant, but ultimately acquiesced because the defendant was persistent in seeking to set it up. Also because of the pending lawsuit, Raffensberger arranged for his lawyer, a guy named Germany, to participate. Joining the defendant on the call were chief of staff Meadows and three private attorneys, Hilbert Kaufman, who is counsel of record in Trump v. Kemp, and the attorneys for whom Eastman had emailed about the defendant's false verification,

and Clida Mitchell's, whom Mark Meadows introduced on the call as someone, quote, who is not the attorney of record, but has been involved, unquote. The defendant began the call with an animated monologue in which he argued that he had won the election in Georgia, saying, okay, thank you very much. Hello, Raffensberger and everybody. We appreciate the time and the call. So we spent a lot of time on this. And if we could just go over some of the numbers, I think it's pretty clear that we won. We won very substantially, Georgia. Throughout the call, the defendant continued to state he had won and referenced Biden's margin of victory that he needed to overcome to prevail in the state, including by asserting that, quote, I just want to find 11,780 votes, unquote. He did not reference

other elections on the same ballot? After the defendant's opening salvo, Brad Raffensberger said, well, I listened to what the president has just said. President Trump, we've had several lawsuits and we've had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. We don't agree that you've won.

The defendant raised multiple false claims of election fraud, each of which Raffensberger refuted in turn. When the defendant attacked Ruby Freeman, calling her, quote, a professional vote scammer and hustler, he mentioned her dozens of times throughout the call. Ravensberger said, you're talking about the state farm video, and I think it's

extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people. They sliced and diced that video and took it out of context. He then offered the defendant a link to the video disproving his claim to which the defendant responded, quote, I don't care about the link. I don't need it. I have a much, I have a much better link, he said. When the defendant claimed that 5,000 dead people voted in Georgia, Raffensberger said, well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data. The data you have is wrong. The actual number was two, two people that were dead that voted. And so that's wrong.

It was two. When the defendant claimed that thousands of out-of-state voters had cast ballots, Raffinsberger's lawyer said, we've been going through each of those as well and those numbers we've got that Ms. Cleena Mitchell was just saying they're not accurate. At one point, the defendant became frustrated after both Raffin's and his lawyer explained repeatedly that his claims had been investigated and were not true and said, quote, and you're going to find that they are, which is totally illegal. It's more illegal for you

than it is for them because you know what they did and you're not reporting it. That's criminal, you know that's a criminal offense and you know you can't let that happen. That's a big risk for you and your lawyer. It's a big risk. The call ended with Raffensberger's lawyer, stating they would coordinate with the lawyer representing Raffensberger's office in the private lawsuit and get together with Hilbert as they agreed to earlier in the call. The day after the call on January 3rd, the defendant falsely tweeted, quote, I spoke to the Secretary of State Raffensberger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling or unable to answer questions such as ballots under the table scam,

ballot destruction, out of state voters, dead voters, and more. He has no clue. Now, Raffensberger promptly responded in a tweet of his own, quote, respectfully, President Trump, what you're saying is not true. The truth will come out. And that brings us to the end of the section on the Georgia pressure campaign. We'll begin our next episode on page 31 with Michigan. Thanks again for listening to Jack, the podcast about all things special counsel. And don't forget, there's a full episode out today where Andy McCabe and I discuss the immunity brief and what's next. We'll see you tomorrow for part two. of the audio version of Jack Smith's immunity brief. MSW Media.