Special counsel says Trump committed ‘private crimes’ in bid to stay in power

Special Counsel Jack Smith, seeking to kick-start the federal prosecution of Donald Trump on election-interference charges, laid out a 165-page road map for allegations that the former president “resorted to crimes” to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.

The filing, unsealed Wednesday in a Washington, D.C., trial court, amounted to a defense of the case even after a recent Supreme Court ruling that conferred broad immunity on presidents for official acts at the core of their constitutional powers. Smith’s team asserts that Trump’s “scheme was fundamentally a private one,”  leaving him open for prosecution.

The Republican presidential nominee has pleaded not guilty and accused Smith of ignoring the high court.

Here are some highlights from the filing:

‘You still have to fight like hell’

Flying aboard Marine One after Election Day, Trump told his family that “it doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell,” according to a White House aide who overheard the remarks on the president’s helicopter.

The aide, identified as an assistant to the president and director of Oval Office operations, “happened to overhear this comment, but wasn’t participating in the conversation,” prosecutors said.

“The statement is plainly private,” prosecutors wrote, in defense of using such evidence at trial. “It was exclusively about the election and the defendant’s determination, as a candidate, to remain in power whether he won or lost.”

‘0-32 on our cases’

In December 2020, Trump amplified a false claim that election workers at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta had committed misconduct by counting “suitcases” of fraudulent votes. The claim was disproved publicly and directly to Trump, prosecutors said. But still the president pushed fraud claims and urged the Georgia attorney general to look at them again “because we’re running out of time.”

On the day of Trump’s call with the state attorney general, his campaign staff acknowledged that the fraud claim involving State Farm Arena was baseless. And they emailed one another about the fact that television networks might decline to run campaign advertisements promoting it.

“When our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we’re 0-32 on our cases,” one campaign adviser wrote, according to Smith’s brief. “I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy s—beamed down from the mothership.”

‘So what?’

Trump’s Twitter post on Jan. 6 attacking then-Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to block President Biden’s win spurred Capitol rioters to threaten Pence, prosecutors said. An aide rushed into Trump’s dining room to inform him that Pence had been taken to a secure location, hoping that Trump would take action to ensure the vice president’s safety. Trump instead only looked at the aide and said, “So what?” according evidence cited in Smith’s filing.

Prosecutors said that exchange further revealed “the private nature of his desperate conduct as a candidate, rather than a President.”

An ‘honest assessment’

Many people in Trump’s orbit tried to persuade him that he had lost and that his baseless claims of widespread fraud wouldn’t hold up in court. In one newly disclosed conversation, one of Trump’s lawyers told him there was no way those arguments would prevail. Trump said, “the details don’t matter,” according to the filing.

Around the same time, Pence said he “tried to encourage” Trump “as a friend” when news networks projected Biden as the winner and at other times “softly suggested” Trump “recognize that the process is over” even if he was unwilling to concede. He encouraged Trump instead to run again in 2024, the filing says.

“I don’t know,” Trump replied, according to the filing. “2024 is so far off.”

Bill Barr speaks out

Then-Attorney General Bill Barr was watching Fox News on Nov. 29, 2020, when he saw Trump make an appearance and declare the Justice Department was “missing in action” and had ignored evidence of fraud. It was then that Barr—identified in the brief as “P52”— decided to come out publicly against Trump’s claims. He arranged lunch with an Associated Press reporter and said the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have tipped the results of the election—“all without informing or seeking permission from the defendant,” prosecutors said.

That day, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani issued a statement on behalf of the campaign attacking Barr for his comments.

Write to C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com and Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com