In a new filing amid their criminal case against former President Donald Trump alleging a series of 2020 election-related conspiracies, federal prosecutors led by Special Counsel Jack Smith refute claims from the ex-president around alleged foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election. They also refute claims of similar domestic interference, an idea that in any context involves allegedly direct impacts on vote totals.
Prosecutors characterize Trump as having leaned on indications of foreign influence campaigns targeting U.S. elections to try and make a broader point about the claimed interference — which is something simply different. There are numerous technological safeguards around the counting and tabulation of votes, like keeping many such machines (and all machines used for actually casting votes) off the internet. Any targeting of even internet-accessible voter registration databases or something similar would not have affected the voting and tabulation process.
And the government says they interviewed a long list of individuals from Trump’s own administration who attested to these circumstances and the lack of evidence.
Authorities explained: “To the contrary, as the defendant is aware from the discovery that has been provided, the Government asked every pertinent witness—including the former DNI, former Acting Secretary of DHS, former Acting Deputy Secretary of DHS, former CISA Director, former Acting CISA Director, former CISA Senior Cyber Counsel, former National Security Advisor (“NSA”), former Deputy NSA, former Chief of Staff to the National Security Council, former Chairman of the Election Assistance Commission (“EAC”), Presidential Intelligence Briefer, former Secretary of Defense, and former senior DOJ leadership—if they were aware of any evidence that a domestic or foreign actor flipped a single vote in a voting machine during the presidential election. The answer from every single official was no.”
The context for this filing was a rebuttal from prosecutors to a series of demands from Trump around the discovery process. Discovery is the routine period before trial in which case-related materials are assembled and shared, and Trump had wanted a significant expansion of the associated obligations on the government, meaning what they’d need to hand over… though some of what he could be imagining here, like potential evidence for the claimed fraud, doesn’t exist.
