Special counsel Jack Smith on Wednesday asked a U.S. District Court to deny Donald Trump's request that the election interference case against the former president be dropped.
Smith and his team of lawyers said it "is incorrect" for Trump's team to assert that the superseding indictment returned against Trump in August does not show that the former president bears responsibility for the events of Jan. 6.
"Contrary to the defendant’s claim ... that he bears no factual or legal responsibility for the 'events on January 6,' the superseding indictment plainly alleges that the defendant willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceeding by summoning them to Washington, D.C., and then directing them to march to the Capitol to pressure the Vice President and legislators to reject the legitimate certificates and instead rely on the fraudulent electoral certificates," Smith said in a court filing to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Smith on Aug. 27 filed a new indictment against Trump for efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election. The superseding indictment keeps the same criminal charges but narrows the allegations against Trump after a Supreme Court opinion conferring broad immunity on former presidents.
Trump has argued the entire case should be thrown out after the high court's ruling.
Smith filed a new indictment against Trump for efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that kept the same criminal charges but narrowed the allegations against him following a Supreme Court opinion conferring broad immunity on former presidents.
Trump railed against the superseding indictment, calling it a "direct assault on democracy."
Early last month, in the first court hearing in nearly a year, Trump's lawyer clashed with the judge after suggesting the government was rushing forward with an "illegitimate" indictment at the height of the White House campaign.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers were bitterly at odds over the next steps in the case after the Supreme Court narrowed the scope of the prosecution by ruling that former presidents are entitled to broad immunity from criminal charges. The dueling proposals and testy courtroom exchanges reflected the extent to which the justices' July opinion had upended the path of the case that charges Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
"We may be dealing with an illegitimate indictment from the get-go," Trump attorney John Lauro said. He added: "We want an orderly process that does justice to the Supreme Court opinion."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.