Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ to overturn 2020 result – prosecutors

Trump’s lawyers fought to keep the latest filing sealed, and campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called it “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, Trump called it a “hit job” and said it “should not have been released right before the election”.

He accused prosecutors of “egregious” misconduct.

The filing offers new evidence and presents the clearest view yet of how prosecutors would seek to present their case against Trump at trial.

It alleges that he always planned to declare victory no matter the result, and laid the groundwork for this long before election day. It also accuses him of knowingly spreading false claims about the vote that he himself deemed “crazy”.

Mr Smith also provides several new details about the Trump campaign’s alleged role in sowing chaos in battleground states, where a large number of mail-in ballots were being counted in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, Michigan, when a large batch of ballots seemed to be in favour of Biden, a Trump campaign operative allegedly told his colleague to “find a reason” that something was wrong with the ballots to give him “options to file litigation”.

The filing also claims that Trump and his allies, including lawyer Rudy Giuliani, sought to “exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” on 6 January 2021 to delay the election certification. They allegedly did this by calling senators and leaving voicemails that asked them to object to the state electors.

Trump said on Wednesday that the case would end with his “complete victory”. A trial has not been set, but any potential date will almost certainly be after the 5 November election