WASHINGTON (AP) – Donald Trump laid the groundwork for an attempt to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly spread false claims of voter fraud and resorted to “crime” in his failed attempt to stay in power, they say a recently unsealed court filing by prosecutors who have new evidence from the groundbreaking criminal case against the former president.

The filing from special counsel Jack Smith's team offers the most comprehensive look yet at what prosecutors plan to prove as the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election goes to trial. Despite a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself documents in detail Trump's attempts to overturn the election, the file cites previously unknown reports from Trump's closest aides that paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who, while losing control of the White House, “Used deception.” to target every phase of the electoral process.”

“So what?” The filing quotes Trump telling an aide after being told that his Vice President, Mike Pence, had been moved to a safe location after a crowd of violent Trump supporters stormed the building US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to attempt to prevent the counting of electoral votes.

“The details don't matter,” Trump said when an adviser told him that a lawyer who faced his legal challenges would not be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing said.

The letter was released over the objections of the Trump legal team in the final month of a hard-fought presidential campaign in which Democrats have sought to make Trump's refusal to accept the election results four years ago at the center of their claims that he is unfit for office be.

The problem only surfaced on Tuesday evening Vice President Debate When Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, lamented the violence at the Capitol, while a Republican opponent, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, declined to answer directly when asked if Trump lost the 2020 race .

The filing was initially filed under seal after a Supreme Court Opinion That decision gave former presidents broad immunity for official actions they take while in office, a decision that limited the scope of prosecutions and eliminated the possibility of a trial before next month's election.

The purpose of the brief is to convince U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the crimes charged in the indictment were committed in Trump's private capacity, not in a presidential capacity, and therefore can remain part of the case as it moves forward. Chutkan allowed an edited version to be published although Trump's lawyers argued that it was unfair to unseal it so close to the election.

Although the prospects for a trial are uncertain, particularly if Trump wins the presidency and a new attorney general seeks dismissal of the case, the brief still acts as a roadmap for the testimony and evidence prosecutors would seek before a jury.

“Although defendant was the sitting president during the charged conspiracies, his plan was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team wrote, adding: “When defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crime to remain in office. “

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the letter “full of falsehoods” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-made accusations that Smith and the Democrats are “determined to weaponize the Justice Department to stay in power.” Trump said in a separate post on his Truth Social platform that the case would end in his “complete victory.”

The filing alleges that Trump “laid the groundwork for rejecting the election results before the contest was over,” telling advisers that if he was ahead early, he would “declare victory, before the ballots were counted and a winner was predicted.”

Immediately after the election, prosecutors say his advisers tried to sow chaos in the vote count. In one case, a campaign official also described as a Trump co-conspirator was told that results at a polling place in Michigan appeared correct in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. The person reportedly responded: “Find a reason why that isn’t the case” and “Give me options to file a lawsuit.”

Prosecutors also alleged that Trump made allegations of fraud even though he knew they were false, and described how he told others that claims made by attorney Sidney Powell about the election's regularity were “crazy,” referring to him the science fiction series “Star Trek”. Nevertheless, days later, he advertised a lawsuit she wanted to file on the platform then known as Twitter.

To demonstrate his apparent indifference to the veracity of the voter fraud allegations, prosecutors also cite an account from a White House staffer who, after the election, overheard Trump telling his wife, daughter and son-in-law on Marine One: “This is not the case No matter whether you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

The filing also contains details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on November 12, 2020, at which Pence reiterated “a face-saving option” for Trump and told him: “Don't give in, acknowledge it.” .” the process is over.”

At another private lunch days later, Pence called on Trump to accept the election results and run again in 2024.

“I don’t know, 2024 is so far away,” Trump told him, the filing says.

Prosecutors say the defendant began thinking about Congress' role in the trial on Dec. 5.

“For the first time he mentioned to Pence the possibility of challenging the election results in the House of Representatives,” it said, citing a phone call.

But Trump “disrespected” Pence “in the same way he disrespected dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected the legal claims of him and his allies, and that he disrespected officials in targeted states – including those of his own party – who publicly stated that he had lost and that his specific allegations of fraud were false,” prosecutors wrote.

Pence recorded some of his interactions with Trumpand his eventual breakup with him, in a book he wrote in 2022 called “So Help Me God.” He too was ordered to do so appear before the grand jury Investigating Trump after courts rejected executive privilege claims.

Prosecutors also argue that Trump used his Twitter account to further his illegal scheme by spreading false claims of voter fraud, attacking “those who are telling the truth about his election defeat” and exhorting his followers to vote for the certification on March 6 . to travel to Washington in January 2021.

They intend to use “forensic evidence” from Trump’s iPhone to provide insight into Trump’s behavior after the attack on the Capitol.

Of the more than 1,200 tweets Trump sent in the weeks cited in the indictment, the vast majority were about the 2020 election, prosecutors said, including those that falsely claimed that Pence could reject voters despite being the vice president Trump said he had no such power.

This “steady stream of disinformation” in the weeks following the election culminated in his speech at the Ellipse Building on the morning of January 6, 2021, in which Trump “used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters .” “March to the Capitol and disrupt the certification process,” prosecutors wrote.

His “personal desperation was at its peak that morning” as he was “just hours away from the certification process that spelled the end,” prosecutors wrote.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.