Filing in Trump Election Case Fleshes Out Roles of a Sprawling Cast

When the special counsel, Jack Smith, charged former President Donald J. Trump last year with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, the federal indictment filed in Washington had only one defendant: Mr. Trump himself, who stood accused of working with a small team of conspirators.

But in a court filing unsealed on Wednesday, Mr. Smith drew on the actions of a much larger group to tell the tale of how Mr. Trump lost the race but sought to stay in the White House.

He populated his brief with a sprawling cast of characters — lawyers, longtime Trump aides, campaign operatives, even some of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — who all played a supporting role either for or against Mr. Trump’s attempts to cling to power.

Most of them were not named in the 165-page filing, and were referred to only by numeric monikers, though many of their identities could be divined from details in the brief. And the sheer scope of the crew was evidenced by the fact that the anonymized references started with Person 1 and went all the way to Person 71.

Many of them had surfaced in the investigation conducted by the House select committee on Jan. 6 or in criminal proceedings in Georgia and Arizona. But Mr. Smith’s investigation, which gathered evidence and grand jury testimony not available in the other inquiries, was able to weave their stories together with new detail.

Among those characters was Eric Herschmann, a lawyer who had met Mr. Trump through his childhood friend, Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law.