Judge Unseals New Evidence in Federal Election Case Against Trump

When told by an aide that Vice President Mike Pence was in peril as the rioting on Capitol Hill escalated on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump replied, “So what?”

When one of his lawyers told him that his false claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud would not hold up in court, Mr. Trump responded, “The details don’t matter.”

On a flight with Mr. Trump and his family after the election, an Oval Office assistant heard Mr. Trump say: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

Those accounts were among new evidence disclosed in a court filing made public on Wednesday in which the special counsel investigating Mr. Trump made his case for why the former president is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

Made public by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, the 165-page brief was partly redacted but expansive, adding details to the already extensive record of how Mr. Trump lost the race but attempted nonetheless to cling to power.

The brief from the prosecution team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, asserts that there is ample evidence that Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office were those of a desperate losing candidate rather than official acts of a president that would be considered immune from prosecution under a landmark Supreme Court ruling this summer.