3 'Unofficial' Reasons Jack Smith Gave Trump To Hate October

Now that special counsel Jack Smith has laid out some of the evidence he intends to use at trial to convince jurors that Donald Trump conspired to subvert the 2020 election, it soon goes next to a federal judge to decide which of Trump’s acts were “official” — and therefore not prosecutable under the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding when presidents can be granted immunity.

Smith’s 165-page partially redacted document argues that Trump carried out some behavior as a presidential candidate, not only as a former president.

Until late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was on track to give Trump’s lawyers until Oct. 17 to respond. They requested that she extend the deadline until Nov. 21 — weeks after Election Day will have come and gone, and at a point where voters will have already decided how they feel about a presidential candidate who stands criminally accused of trying to subvert the last election he lost. But on Thursday afternoon, Chutkan agreed to meet him halfway and granted Trump’s request to delay his response until after Election Day. He now has until Nov. 7 to file. Trump has also asked that two of the four criminal charges he faces be dismissed.

After Trump’s lawyers submit their response, Chutkan will need to determine what was and was not “official” conduct. Below are three key pieces of information from Smith’s brief that she may consider when making that call.

1. The Campaign And Its ‘Conduits’

Smith underlined in the brief that Trump used “deceit” regularly as a candidate.

Despite casting a mail-in ballot for himself in 2020, Trump consistently told rallygoers that such voting was flawed and that Democrats could only win if they used mail-in ballots to engage in “massive cheating.”