As Donald Trump sought to retain the presidency after losing the 2020 election, his legal team considered whether they could take a dramatic step to manipulate the results in his favor — and simply throw out hundreds of thousands of votes that had been legally cast in Philadelphia.
The plot was part of a multipronged effort to keep Trump in power, according to special counsel Jack Smith, who provided details about it in a report released early Tuesday.
And although the scheme never came to fruition, it nonetheless was discussed by some of the highest-ranking officials in his orbit, according to the report, which quotes Rudy Giuliani — then Trump’s personal lawyer — as saying the idea was to “just flat out change the vote, deduct that number of votes from the — declare those votes, 300,000 votes in Philadelphia, illegal, unlawful. Reduce the number by 300,000.”
The plan’s inclusion in Smith’s report served as another reminder of the key role Pennsylvania played in the 2020 election and a demonstration of how the state became a central focus for Trump and his lawyers as they sought to contest Joe Biden’s win of its crucial 19 electoral votes. Biden, a Democrat, defeated Trump by about 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania that year, delivering him a key battleground state in a close and consequential contest.
The release of Smith’s 137-page report marks the end of his attempt to convict Trump for trying to subvert the 2020 election results. With Trump poised to return to the White House next week after winning the 2024 election, Smith said it was impossible to pursue the case further due to the longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.
“The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind,” Smith wrote. “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
Trump responded on social media by blasting Smith, calling him “deranged” and saying his efforts to secure a conviction were politically motivated.
“Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide,” Trump wrote.
Smith had revealed in previous court filings the extent to which prosecutors say Trump’s various plots to remain in the White House four years ago intersected with Pennsylvania: Trump’s team sought to recruit ”fake electors” to disrupt congressional certification of the vote; involved several prominent state Republican operatives in that effort; and relied on a Kensington native to play a key role in sowing mistrust in the results.
More than 100 Pennsylvanians have also been charged with storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — an attempt to block certification of Biden’s victory, and one that Smith said Trump provoked by encouraging violence against his perceived opponents. Trump has denied that, and said the prosecution of those who participated in the riot has been corrupt and unfair. He’s promised to pardon at least some of those who have been convicted.
As for the plot to throw out Philadelphia votes, Smith said that demonstrated how Trump and those around him had sought to “effectively cast aside legitimate votes in a manner that would have deprived citizens of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”
Giuliani, who is referred to in the report as “Co-Conspirator 1,″ discussed the Philadelphia-centric idea on a podcast with Trump ally Steve Bannon shortly after Election Day in 2020. But Smith said Trump sought to advance similar efforts elsewhere, including by pressuring Georgia’s top voting official to “find” votes that would tip that state in his favor, and urging then-Vice President Mike Pence to “discard the legitimate electoral certificates that reflected millions of citizens’ votes in the targeted states.”
“The evidence collected showed that Mr. Trump targeted this voting right with precision: he centered his false claims of election fraud on select states, or cities and counties within those states, with large numbers of voters who had not chosen to reelect him,” Smith wrote.
Much of Smith’s report covered material that had already been publicly disclosed, either in prior court filings by his office, or in documents made public by Congressional investigators.
Still, it included several other mentions of Pennsylvania, including references to the “fake elector” scheme, which Trump’s team sought to deploy in six other battleground states that he also lost, and a description of how Trump “repeatedly made provably false allegations about fraud,” despite being told otherwise by local officials, including the chair of the state Republican party at the time, Lawrence Tabas.
The report also revisited Trump’s targeting of then-Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican who publicly defended the integrity of the city’s vote count. After Trump posted a tweet criticizing Schmidt, “threats against [him] grew more targeted, more detailed, and more graphic,” the report said, and some included “highly personal information like the names and ages of [his] family members, as well as photos or the address of his home.”
Smith said the common link between all of Trump’s efforts was “deceit,” adding: “the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used these lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States’ democratic process.”
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