“Make them a riot” in Detroit. The Trump 2020 election case is marked by new allegations

Trump, who is running for president for the third time, called the charges part of a “witch hunt” to deny him a return to the White House.

Earlier this week, Trump’s lawyers pushed for further redactions of Smith’s court filings before they were made public, arguing that the special counsel was trying to influence the upcoming election by releasing new details of the investigation.

Smith’s office “wants its politically motivated manifesto to be released … in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election, while early voting has already begun across the United States,” his lawyers wrote.

The new filing comes after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outspoken presidents enjoy absolute immunity for official acts, requiring Smith to recast the case around the new restrictions.

As in the original indictment filed last year, Michigan plays an important role in the new document. The state and Detroit are mentioned a total of 60 times in the 165-page document.

The filing recounts how Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani allegedly “attempted to pressure the Michigan Legislature to overturn the valid election results” by passing a joint resolution challenging the election results.

Chatfield and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, both Republicans, insisted during the post-election unrest that they had not been presented with evidence of fraud that would change the election results. According to court documents, they told Trump the same thing.

Then-candidate Joe Biden won Michigan by a margin of about 154,000 votes, or 2.7%.

The Antrim County report came about after attorney Matt DePerno convinced a judge in early December 2020 to let him bring in an outside firm to investigate Dominion voting machines after an initial reporting error.

DePerno had sued over a close vote on an unrelated ordinance. He has pleaded not guilty and separately charged the charges related to his alleged attempts to obtain and gain access to voting machines across the state.

The Antrim report was discredited not long after its release, but not before Trump used it as conclusive evidence that the election had been rigged against him, despite several senior aides and aides trying to convince him otherwise.

Trump gave then-Attorney General Bill Barr the Antrim County report on the day he resigned, according to transcripts of Barr’s interviews during a congressional investigation on January 6, 2021.

“’This is absolute proof that the Dominion machines were rigged,’” Barr said Trump told him. “‘The report means I have a second term in office.'”

But Barr told investigators he thought the reporter was “very amateur” and had come to “nonsensical” conclusions.

Trump’s attempt to atone for his 2020 defeat effectively ended on January 6, 2021, when Vice President Mike Pence refused to block Congress’ certification of the election despite riots at the US Capitol.