A Donald Trump campaign worker tried to encourage a riot to stop the 2020 vote counting in Michigan, prosecutors have alleged.
The campaign worker appears to be new to the case and not listed as one of the six co-conspirators. Tuesday's filing suggests that the Trump prosecutor may widen the case to include actions by others who allegedly illegally tried to stop Joe Biden from becoming president.
The submission by special counsel Jack Smith to Judge Tanya Chutkan states that from November 4, 2020, the day after election day, an unindicted co-conspirator, who was identified only as a Trump campaign employee, "exchanged a series of text messages" with a campaign attorney at the TCF Center in Detroit while 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," Smith's submission states.
Parts of the filing are redacted to hide some aspects of the Detroit allegations. It's not yet known if the campaign worker is one of the six unindicted co-conspirators previously mentioned by prosecutors, but it seems unlikely as they are always identified by number in Smith's submissions, such as "co-conspirator 1" and "co-conspirator 2."
Tuesday's submission states that as the campaign employee was texting the Trump attorney, "an election official at the TCF Center observed that as Biden began to take the lead, a large number of untrained individuals flooded the TCF Center and began making illegitimate and aggressive challenges to the vote count.
"Thereafter, Trump made repeated false claims regarding election activities at the TCF Center, when in truth his agent was seeking to cause a riot to disrupt the count."
The former president was indicted on four counts in Washington, D.C., for allegedly working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the runup to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
It is one of four criminal cases that Trump is facing while he campaigns as frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. He has also pleaded not guilty to charges in the other cases and has repeatedly said that they form part of a political witch hunt.
Newsweek sought email comment on Wednesday from Donald Trump's attorney.
In the filing, Smith also said that his team would introduce evidence showing how Trump and his co-conspirators tried to stop "dissent against election fraud claims."
Trump and "Co-Conspirator 1" worked 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."
Co-conspirator 1 has previously been identified as attorney and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Newsweek sought email comment from Giuliani's spokesman on Wednesday.
Prosecutors will present evidence of "continued retaliation against the [RNC] Chief Counsel for publicly speaking the truth about the falsity of the defendant's claims," Tuesday's filing states.
Ryan Goodman, a New York University professor and former special counsel at the Department of Defense, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday that the filing suggests there may be a new co-conspirator in Trump's case and that the description of the person in Detroit "does not necessarily match the 6 in [the] indictment."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more
