>[!SUMMARY] Table of Contents >- [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#De-redaction key (Dramatis Personae)|De-redaction key (Dramatis Personae)]] >    - [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Various personal|Various personal]] >    - [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Co-Conspirators|Co-Conspirators]] >    - [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Companies. |Companies. ]] >- [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Some useful acronyms|Some useful acronyms]] >- [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#My synopsis of my synopsis. |My synopsis of my synopsis. ]] >- [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Section I : Factual Proffer|Section I : Factual Proffer]] >- [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Section II: Legal Framework|Section II: Legal Framework]] >- [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case), Section III - None of the Allegations or Evidence is Protected by Presidential Immunity|Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case), Section III - None of the Allegations or Evidence is Protected by Presidential Immunity]] >- [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Outline of the podcast|Outline of the podcast]] >    - [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Podcast 1. Section I. Factual Proffer, pp 1-30|Podcast 1. Section I. Factual Proffer, pp 1-30]] >    - [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Podcast 2 Still in Section 1. pp 31-|Podcast 2 Still in Section 1. pp 31-]] >    - [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Podcast 3|Podcast 3]] >    - [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Podcast 4 Section III, starting at page 111|Podcast 4 Section III, starting at page 111]] >    - [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Podcast 5 Section III, starting at page 144|Podcast 5 Section III, starting at page 144]] >- [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Some note about some of the players.|Some note about some of the players.]] >- [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case)#Footnotes|Footnotes]] I've written up this document, what I hope is a slightly more digestible version of Jack Smith's 160 brief on why the recent (bizarre, IMO) SCOTUS ruling on Presidential immunity (see [[US v Trump]]) does not apply to the elements of the superseding indictment in the Jan 6 election interference case, currently before the D.C. Circuit Judge Chutkan. On my first attempt, I kept the three sections in this one file. That has become untenable, so I'm breaking it out into several files. At the very least, it will be 4; this file (serving as an overview), then one file each for the three sections of the brief, helpfully named _Section I_, _Section II_ and _Section III_ In this brief, Jack Smith's team goes down the list of alleged crimes, detailing why none of them suffer from any defect arising from the SCOTUS ruling in Trump v. United States. Some of this document is only meant to give a *precis* of certain parts, and point you to the places were you can go read the fuller account. Other parts go into more detail. I'm writing this basically while I'm reading it. Mostly what I'm trying to do is just give a report on what's in the brief. However, I will (unlike Alison Gill in the _Jack_ podcast) occasionally make some editorial comments that are not simply a condensation of the brief. All markdown systems are a bit short of features, so these will be indicated with, well, parentheses, thusly (whd: comment here...) Later on, I started incorporating footnotes, which appear like this "[^x]" where 'x' is a number. Those will **always** be my commentary and **not** a footnote that appears in the brief itself. . I've tried to remove the references to footnotes from this synopsis when quoting from it, but I may have missed some. Please disregard any numbers you see in any quote I give, they're footnotes in the original and won't be helpful to you, since most of them have been redacted. Other parenthetical remarks not so indicated should be taken to **in** the synopsis, rather than my opining on the matter at hand. The redacted 160 page brief [can be read here](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/73357920e3c8d739/8fc8bfd0-full.pdf) The NYTimes article on this brief is [here](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/us/politics/trump-jan-6-case-jack-smith-evidence.html) The [Podcast _Jack_ has Allison Gill reading an unredacted version of the brief](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jack/id1317481380?i=1000672000937). There are 5 segments to the podcast. Page numbers and time codes appear within the text as (pp x-y)(pcX ##:##-##:##), where X is the podcast number. # De-redaction key (Dramatis Personae) In the document itself the names of these people are redacted. However, Adam Klassfeld, at JustSecurity.org has gone through this and other filings and, by looking at the context, and knowing the history of Trump's attempt to overturn the election, has figured out who some of them are. This is the key. I will be using the names, rather than the redacted numbers. In the list below, some numbers are either don't appear, are unmarked, or marked 'unknown'; the names of these particular people are unknown. ## Various personal People involved in the case but not identified as a _co-conspirator_ (those people have the designator _CC#_) + P1: Steve Bannon + P2: Bill Stepien - Trump campaign staffer + P3: [[Justin Clark]] - Deputy Campaign Manager for Trump in 2020 election + P4: [[Jason Miller]] - Campaign advisor + P5: [[Mike Roman]]: Trump operative and co-conspirator + P6: [[Roger Stone]] - Beezelbub incarnate + P7: unknown WH staffer + P8: [[Marc Short]] - Pence's Chief of Staff + P9: [[Eric Herschmann]] - An outsider brought in as a conduit between the WH and the campaign + P12: [[Jenna Ellis]] - Another private Trump Lawyer on **Team Crazy** + P15: [[Nick Luna]] - Personal Assistant to Trump at the WH + P16: [[Doug Doucey]] - Governor of Arizona + P18: [[Rusty Bowers]] - Arizona Speaker of the House + P19 [[Christina Bobb]] - Lawyer on **Team Crazy** + P21: [[Mark Meadows]] + P22: Unknown + P23: + P24: + P25: [[Gabriel Sterling]] - COO of GA Secretary of State Office. + P26: [[Chris Carr]] - Georgia Attorney General + P31 [[Cleta Mitchell]] - Trump private lawyer on election lawsuits + P32: Alex Hilbert - Trump private lawyer on election lawsuits, lead counsel in GA lawsuits + P33: [[Brad Rafensberger]] - Georgia Secretary of State + P36: Alex Kaufmann - Trump private lawyer on election lawsuits + P37: [[Mike Shirkey]] - Michigan Senate Majority Leader + P38: [[Lee Chatsfield]] - Michigan Speaker of the House + P39: [[Ronna McDaniel]] : RNC Chairwoman + P42: [[Molly Michael]] : Trump Executive Assistant + P45: [[Dan Scavino]] - WH Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Social Media + P46: [[Laurence Tabas]]: Chairman of Pennsylvania Republican Party 2020 + P47: [[Al Schmidt]] : Philadelphia City Commissioner during 2020 election + P48: [[Bernie Kerik]] + P49: [[Brian Hagadorn]]: WI Supreme Court Justice. Trump supported him in election, but turned when he ruled against Trump in the Wisconsin lawsuit [[Trump v Biden]] + P51: [[Tucker Carlson]] (needs no introduction) + P52: [[William Barr]] - Trump's Attorney General. + P54: unknown + P55:unknown + P56: unknown + P57: + P58 [[Greg Jacob]] - Pence counsel + P59: [[Pat Cipillone]] - White House Counsel + P60: [[Kayleigh McEnany]] -White House Press Secretary\ + P61: [[Karen Fann]] - President of the Arizona State Senate in 2020 + P63: [[Eric Schmidt]] - Missouri Attorney General + P64: + P65: + P66: + P67: Sheila Craighead - White House Photographer + P68: [[Michael Flynn]] + P59: [[Peter Navaro]] - WH advisor on trade and serial violator of the [[Hatch Act]] + P60 + P70: [[Ivan Raiklin]] - WH surrogate + P71: [[Patrick Philbin]] - Deputy White House Counsel. ## Co-Conspirators + CC1: Rudy Giuliani - private Trump lawyer on **Team Crazy** + CC2: John Eastman - Private Trump attorney, one of the key conspirators in the fake elector scheme on **Team Crazy** + CC3 : [[Sidney Powell]] - a particularly unhinged private Trump lawyer on **Team Crazy**, she of [Kraken] fame. + CC5: [[Kenneth Chesebro]] - lawyer from WI, the author of the [[Fake Electors Scheme]] + CC6: Boris Epshteyn - private Trump attorney and one of the key conspirators in fake elector scheme on **Team Crazy** ## Companies. + C1 : [[Sympatico Software Systems]]e Systems - outside company hired by Trump campaign to investigate fraud allegations. Found nothing + C2: [[Berkerley Research Group]] - outside company hired by Trump campaign to investigate fraud allegations. Found nothing + C3: [[Dominion Voting Systems|Dominion]] - Manufactures voting machines which the Trump campaign, particularly [[Sidney Powell|Powell]] were very critical. Sued Fox News and [[One America Network]]. Both settled, Fox for $780 million. Don't know about OAN # Some useful acronyms + DoJ - Department of Justice + SoS - Secretary of State + SotH - Speaker of the House + CISA: Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Director Krebs, until Trump fired him for saying the election was "the most secure in history" + JSIB : Short for 'Jack Smith Immunity Brief' Also, unless indicated otherwise, all quotes given with page numbers will be from the brief listed in the second URL. Occasionally I will present an 'aside', which is a bit of explanation I feel appropriate. Numbers appearing thusly (pX, or ppX-Y) are page numbers in the brief. Numbers appearing thusly (pcX,yy:zz) are timecodes in podcast X on _Jack_, the URL for the first of which (PC1) appears above. Follow your nose for the rest of them. As of this date ([[2024-10-13]], they're finished the reading, with 5 podcasts) # My synopsis of my synopsis. As I've developed this document, it having grown far past what I was expecting, I decided to create an even more _distilled_ version of the Immunity brief. If you wish to get a thumbnail sketch of the events and evidence the brief covers, see: [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief - Synopsis]] But I'll give a bullet point outline here as well. The _synopsis_ proper will begin at the '===' marker 1. Trump started laying the groundwork for his attempts to stay in power **months before the election** by claiming that the only way he'd lose the election is if there were massive fraud 2. Trump had been warned that the results probably wouldn't be finalized until a few days after the election. Nevertheless, he _declared victory_, even though his staff told him this was **grossly** premature. 3. Simultaneously with filing lawsuits in the 7 battleground states challenging the results (a perfectly legitimate response), Trump started his campaign of gross dishonesty about the results of the election. From this point right up to the current day he has continued this campaign of **utter and complete** fabrication, misrepresentation, disinformation and lies about the results. Additionally, he has target people for _special treatment_ using _twitter_, and _Truth Social_, resulting in instances of threats of violence ([[Ruby Freeman]], [[Shaye Moss]], [[Adam Kinzinger]], [[Liz Cheney]]) as well as some who have suffered actual acts of violence (e.g. [[Paul Pelosi]]), all of which, in my opinion, are examples of Trump's use of [[Stochastic Terrorism]] 4. As his lawsuits failed in the courts, Trump turned to trying to pressure the state officials of the battleground states to induce them to call the legislatures into session and overturn the election. In all cases, he used as his justification claims of rampant fraud, claims for which the state officials expressed opinions ranging from skepticism to outright rebuttals. Whenever asked for evidence of fraud, he said he would get it to the questioner, **but he never provided any evidence in response to these requests**. In all cases the targeted officials said they didn't have the authority to overturn the election, and when they said this, particularly when they said it publicly, Trump, and his co-conspirators turned to assailing them on Twitter and in other public venues, leading to more examples of [[Stochastic Terrorism]]. In the category attacked by Trump and his minions we have[[Rusty Bowers]], [[Brad Raffensperger]], [[Gretchen Whitmer]], [[Mike Shirkey]], [[Lee Chatfield]], [[Brian Kemp]], and many more. As time wore on, and the deadline for the votes for the electors, you will see that Trump's communications became more and more desperate and his accusations more and more **unhinged** 5. With these two methods of overturning the election failing, Trump and his team turned to another approach: slates of **Fake Electors**. This line of attack was led mostly by [[Kenneth Chesebro]], who was the architect of the plan, [[John Eastman]], one its most ardent proponents, [[Boris Epshteyn]] and a political operative [[Mike Roman]]. In the begin this plan was to create these slates of electors as **alternates** in case Trump's legal challenges prevailed, but as each one of these failed in the courts, the plan morphed into creating **illegal** slates of electors that **looked** like legitimate slates. They tried to do this by making the actual documentation **look** like legitimate documents and have the fake electors **act** in accordance with the rules for each state. Then these slates would be to the joint session certifying the election in hopes of having [[Mike Pence|Pence]] either 1. select the Trump electors instead of those **duly and legally** certified by the states -- or -- 2. Use the pretext of the existence of the fake slate to say that there were **competing slates** and, therefore, he could _negotiate_ a solution to defeat Biden. 3. Alternately, he could legitimately say that, in the presence of these competing slates from the battleground states, the only solution was to send the slates back to the states for consideration anew. 4. All of these actions are illegal, [[Mike Pence|Pence]]'s role in the certification process is entirely **ministerial** (as the co-conspirators well knew and said as much on several occasions -- see below, particularly regarding [[John Eastman]]), who repeatedly told Trump and his co-conspirators (particularly [[Eastman]]) that he didn't have the authority to act as Trump wanted and wouldn't take any of these actions. 6. In order to put more and more pressure on Pence, Trump and his co-conspirators lied, both the Pence and, most importantly, to the public, using various outlets, including [[Steve Bannon]]'s podcast, pushing the lies that 1. The fake electors were merely a contingency (and, as the evidence below will show, this is a baldfaced lie) 2. Pence had the authority to decide which slates were legitimate (wrong, and they knew it, and Pence repeatedly said he wouldn't do it) 3. Alternately, Pence could send the slates back to the states.(also wrong, a violation of the [[Electoral Count Act|ECA]], they knew it and [[John Eastman|Eastman]] admitted as much on several occastions) 7. When the day of the certification arrived, Trump and his co-conspirators tried to ratchet up the pressure on the legislators by holding a rally where they purposefully used inflammatory rhetoric to work the crowd up, with the entirely predictable result. Adding to the certainty, several of Trump's co-conspirators ([[Roger Stone]]) and [[Kenneth Chesebro]] was at the capital when it was stormed) had already been in contact with far right-wing groups, like the [[Proud Boys]] and the [[Oath Keepers]]. While the mob marched to Trump sat in the White House dining room and watched the events play out in realtime, while scrolling through his Twitter feed. 8. Minutes after Pence did as he said he would, and refused to countenance using Trump's slates of **fake electors**, at 2:24pm, Trump sent a tweet calling Pence a coward, unwilling to do what Trump wanted. Several people in the mob, carrying bullhorns, read the tweet out loud to the crowd. That Trump's tweet further enflamed the crowd is seen in testimony and court filings in the federal cases involving the rioters. 9. As evidence of Trump's lack of concern, and willingness to allow the riot to go on as long as possible, as the embers of his plan to retain power died away, I adduce the following evidence. 1. As the rioters broke into the capitol, Pence's Secret Service detail moved him to a more secure location. When a White House staffer [[Nick Luna]] informed Trump of this development, Trump responded "So what?". 2. As reported by [[Cassidy Hutchinson]] [[Mark Meadows]] told Trump the crowd was chanting "Hang Mike Pence", to which Trump responded "so what?" and "he deserved it". To be fair, this is hearsay testimony, so probably not admissible in court unless [[Mark Meadows|Meadows]] gives it in testimony, but here, in the **real world**, where we've been watching Trump's _transactional_ ethos for 10 years, it certainly sounds right that he wouldn't care about someone who wasn't doing what he wanted him to do. 3. And finally, with the White House staff **begging him** to act to calm the mob (which everyone knew he could with one message of social media), he refused to do **anything** for over 3 hours! Finally, at **4:19pm**, Trump sent out a fawning message ("I know your pain...") but **still** pushed the claim that the election had been stolen. Perhaps as a result of this equivocal message, the violence at the capital didn't end immediately and it wasn't until 8pm that the building was cleared. So, in conclusion, Trump lied through the period from before the election until the present day. He never stopped lying. He never stopped pushing his illegal plan to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, as each of his schemes failed, he upped the ante and wen to another scheme until, at last, he was left with nothing but the naked violence of his **innate fascism.** === Beginning of synopsis of Immunity Brief === # Section I : Factual Proffer To make these files more manageable I've removed each section to it's own page. This section presents the **facts** of the case, starting months before the election and following all the way to Jan 6, and some time beyond. See [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case), Section I]] # Section II: Legal Framework Again, for manageability's sake, I've put this content in their own page. This page discusses the legal criteria to be used when judging whether an act is immune or not. See [[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case), Section II]] # Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case), Section III - None of the Allegations or Evidence is Protected by Presidential Immunity Again, for manageability's sake, I've put this content in their own page. This section of the brief goes through most of the evidence presented in _Section I_ and argues why the SCOTUS rulling in [[US v Trump]] shows that these acts are not covered by immunity or, if they have _presumptive immunity_ , that this immunity can be rebutted. See[[Jack Smith Immunity Brief (Jan 6th case), Section III]] # Outline of the podcast ## Podcast 1. Section I. Factual Proffer, pp 1-30 ## Podcast 2 Still in Section 1. pp 31- ## Podcast 3 ## Podcast 4 Section III, starting at page 111 ## Podcast 5 Section III, starting at page 144 (pp 144 - 165) Wrapping up **Section III**, the discussion of why the various findings presented in Section 1, Factual Proffer are not covered by the immunity as decided in the SCOTUS cast *Trump v. United States* # Some note about some of the players. [[Bernie Kerik]]. Former NYPD officer and commissioner in 2000-2001. In 2009 pleaded guilty to 8 federal felony counts for tax evasion and making false statements. Pardoned by Trump, then brought in to help in the fake elector scheme. Just his sort of guy [[Sympatico Software Systems]] Outside data mining firm brought in by the Trump campaign to determine whether there had been any fraud. Found none [[Berkerly Research Group]]Outside data mining firm brought in by the Trump campaign to determine whether there had been any fraud. Found none. # Footnotes [^1]: For example, in the the Jan 4 meeting attempting to convince [[Mike Pence|Pence]] to act illegally to overturn the election results by substituting Trump's **illegal slates of electors** (see the [[Fake Electors Scheme]]), he specifically excluded [[Pat Cipoloni]], the White House counsel, who represents the _office of the White House_, and not the current occupant.