A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Former President Trump will stand for election this November before standing trial for his effort to overturn the last election.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
But the public does now have evidence that Trump's actions to undo his 2020 defeat amount to a crime. A judge has released the prosecutor's newest version of their case. It's their argument that they have the goods to convict Trump even after a Supreme Court ruling puts some of his actions off-limits.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson is here to share more about them. So Carrie, you mentioned that the January 6 case against Donald Trump is not even going to trial this year, so why this new evidence now?
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: This is all an effort by the Justice Department to keep alive this election interference case against Donald Trump. Remember, the Supreme Court this past summer gave Trump and future presidents some substantial immunity from prosecution for their official acts in the White House.
In these new court papers, special counsel Jack Smith is taking pains to show Trump was acting as a political candidate, not a president, almost four years ago when he allegedly tried to overturn the results of that election. And prosecutors have laid out some facts now about Trump's role in a scheme to replace the real electors with slates of phony officials in key swing states and about what Trump did and didn't do in late 2020 and early 2021.
MARTÍNEZ: So didn't the House committee, though - those public hearings, Carrie - didn't they lay all this out already? I mean, what's new about this filing?
JOHNSON: Well, the House investigators dug up a lot of information, but the Justice Department actually had subpoena power, and they had access to some of Trump's campaign aides and to former Vice President Mike Pence. The new filing mentions pages of notes Pence took about his meetings with Trump and outside advisors. Where they said this whole thing is up to Pence, prosecutors say Trump himself was tweeting an attack on Pence from the White House on January 6 as the rioters ransacked the Capitol building. And then after an aide rushed in to describe the chaos and danger there, Trump allegedly said, so what? The former president also allegedly made fun of one of his private lawyers, Sidney Powell, for making what he called crazy claims about election fraud.
MARTÍNEZ: So how's Trump responding to these new revelations?
JOHNSON: A spokesman for Trump's campaign said this court filing is an attempt to interfere in the current election and help Kamala Harris. Trump's spokesman added that prosecutors are engaging in a partisan witch hunt. And it's worth noting that the trial judge in this case, Tanya Chutkan, has said there's no support for the idea DOJ was motivated by partisan bias. She's rejected Trump's claim this was a vindictive or selective prosecution.
Trump will have a chance to respond in writing in the coming weeks. If he disagrees with this judge's ruling, he's likely to appeal all the way back to the Supreme Court. And a key fight to watch now is how much evidence prosecutors will be allowed to use about Mike Pence. Trump says all of that should be out of bounds, but prosecutors say they're relying on Pence, not as the former vice president but because he had a narrow role in charge of the certification of the electoral count in early 2021.
MARTÍNEZ: OK, but what if Trump wins in November? So what happens to all the work the DOJ has put in?
JOHNSON: The former president is likely to direct new officials at the Justice Department to get rid of his federal case in D.C. and also to drop an appeal of the Florida classified documents case against him, too. But if Trump loses at the ballot box, it's still possible he could face trial in D.C., probably not before 2026. That's because the Supreme Court's going to hear this case again before it ever gets to a jury.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thank you.
JOHNSON: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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