The Daily Fuckup

Special counsel prosecutors told a federal court on Dec. 5, 2023, that they should be allowed to use Donald Trump’s post-election and post-riot conduct as evidence of motive and intent in the election-interference case against him. The filing does not decide the case. It asks the judge to let jurors hear a broader set of facts that prosecutors say help explain what Trump was trying to do after losing the 2020 election.

The government’s argument is that Trump’s words and actions after Election Day were not just angry political rhetoric. In the filing, prosecutors said his efforts around the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, along with his public and private messages, are relevant to whether he was trying to obstruct the lawful transfer of power. That is a legal claim the court still has to evaluate, not a finding already made by the judge.

One piece of that argument focuses on Trump’s comments about pardons for Jan. 6 defendants and rioters. Prosecutors said those remarks matter because they may help show how Trump viewed the people who attacked the Capitol and whether he was willing to encourage or excuse them. In the filing, the special counsel also pointed to Trump’s broader embrace of false claims about the election as part of the context jurors should be allowed to consider.

The immediate fight is evidentiary, not a final ruling on guilt. Prosecutors are trying to expand the record the jury can hear; Trump’s defense will argue the filing overreaches and turns political speech into criminal intent. But the government’s position is clear: the Jan. 6 attack was not an isolated event detached from the weeks before it. It was part of the sequence prosecutors want the jury to see when assessing why Trump kept pressing his false election claims and how he reacted when the Capitol was breached.

The filing also shows how much of the case turns on intent. Trump’s lawyers have long argued that he was engaged in hard-edged political advocacy, not a criminal scheme. Prosecutors are asking the court to treat the surrounding conduct differently. They want the judge to view Trump’s comments, his pressure on officials and his posture after the riot as part of one continuing story — one they say helps explain motive, knowledge and purpose. Whether that story comes in at trial is now for the court to decide.