In a new filing with federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team handling the criminal case against Donald Trump alleging a series of conspiracies targeting the presidential election results from 2020 ask that the ex-president’s team be blocked from pushing claims in court alleging secret agents were involved in the January 6 violence.
A conspiracy theory has popped up again and again from the far-right alleging that covert government cooperators propelled the attack on the Capitol of January 6, 2021. There remains no evidence in the public record that such was the case, and FBI Director Christopher Wray has specifically refuted the theory in public testimony before Congress. Prosecutors argued to Chutkan that even the idea that secret government cooperators were possibly there is out of place enough at the eventual trial against Trump that it should be excluded. The federal team returned time and again in the filing to the idea that evidence brought forth at trial should have specific relevance to questions for jurors to determine, meaning whether Trump is guilty of specific offenses as alleged.
And if there’s no connection established between imaginary secret agents and what Trump did, prosecutors contend the theory shouldn’t even be raised.
“The defendant also appears poised to blame undercover agents, government informants, or confidential human sources (collectively, “undercover actors”) for the violence at the Capitol on January 6,” the new filing says, adding: “There is certainly no evidence that the defendant here had contact with or knew of any undercover actor anywhere on January 6—and certainly not at the Capitol, where the defendant promised his supporters he would join them.”
Prosecutors also asked for a ban on attempts to blame figures like the mayor of D.C. and foreign individuals involved in alleged influence operations for the violence. Though Trump’s charges most directly cover his political schemes to stay in power, prosecutors have repeatedly argued the Capitol violence provides relevant context for what he was doing. The full filing can be found here.
