Government

Special Counsel Seeks To Introduce Evidence Of That Other Time Trump Tried To Start A Riot

Hard to keep 'em all straight!

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President Donald Trump

(Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Prosecutors in Trump’s DC election interference case submitted notice yesterday of their intent to present Rule 404(b) evidence establishing that the former president “sowed mistrust in the results of the presidential election” as part of a “common plan to refuse to commit to a peaceful transition of power.”

The document is both spicy, in what it seeks to admit, and juicy, in what it reveals about Trump’s co-conspirators.

The special counsel points to Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2016 and 2012 elections, along with his refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, as evidence that he intended to obstruct Congress in 2020.

The defendant’s consistent refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power, dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign, is admissible evidence of his plan to undermine the integrity of the presidential transition process when faced with the possibility of an election result that he would not like, as well as his motive, intent, and plan to interfere with the implementation of an election result with which he was not satisfied.

Similarly, the government will seek to prove that Trump used the riot as a means to obstruct Congress by pointing to his long game of footsie with the Proud Boys — “stand back and stand by” — and his ongoing support for the January 6 rioters, including his promise to pardon them. They’re also going to subject the jurors to the torture of listening to Trump “sing” along with the “J6 Prison Choir.”

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But the document has some interesting new information about the Trump campaign’s effort to foment a riot to disrupt the vote counting in Detroit.

On November 4, 2020, the Campaign Employee exchanged a series of text messages with an attorney supporting the Campaign’s election day operations at the TCF Center in Detroit, where votes were being counted; in the messages, the Campaign Employee encouraged rioting and other methods of obstruction when he learned that the vote count was trending in favor of the defendant’s opponent.

Journalist Marcy Wheeler suggests that the campaign employee may be Mike Roman, Trump’s Director of Election Day Operations. Roman tweeted out a video amplifying false claims later echoed by Trump that Republican observers were excluded wholesale from observing the vote count in Detroit, rather than prevented from overwhelming the civil servants doing their job.

Prosecutors will also seek to bolster their claims that Trump knew he was pushing false claims of electoral fraud by pointing to efforts “to retaliate against the former Chief Counsel to the Republican National Committee (RNC) for publicly refuting the defendant and Co-Conspirator 1’s lies about election fraud.” That’s an apparent reference to Rudy Giuliani’s demand that RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel fire lawyer Justin Riemer after he pushed back against false claims of election fraud.

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Trump’s lawyers have already tried and failed to strike all mention of the January 6 riot as inflammatory and prejudicial. Presumably they’ll object to any attempt to connect their client to an election night riot and a pack of domestic terrorists whose leader was convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Cue the performative outrage in 3 … 2 …

US v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes the Law and Chaos substack and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

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