Donald Trump has accused Kamala Harris of trying to subvert the presidential election, after damning court documents were released just a month before polling day.
The former president has been charged with trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election, and the newly unsealed 165-page filing is the prosecution’s case against him.
Among the claims made in the document are that Trump planned to “declare himself a winner” in the 2020 election before ballots were counted, and that he responded “so what” when he was told that Mike Pence, his vice president, was rushed to safety as the Capitol was stormed by rioters.
The timing of the release prompted a furious response from Trump on Wednesday night.
He said: “The release of this falsehood-ridden, unconstitutional, Jan 6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the most important election in the history of our country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and weaponise American democracy, and interfere in the 2024 presidential election”
Mr Walz, Ms Harris’s running mate took on his Republican counterpart, JD Vance in a CBS vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night. Mr Vance was widely deemed the winner.
Trump went on to say that Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by the justice department in November 2022 to lead the prosecution and investigation into him, was deranged and “hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department.”
The former president was indicted by a grand jury on four charges related to his alleged effort to subvert the 2020 election, but his trial was derailed over a dispute about whether he enjoyed immunity from prosecution while in office.
Mr Smith’s motion argues that Trump’s election meddling efforts were undertaken in a “private” capacity, and therefore not exempt from prosecution.
Typically, such a motion would follow a filing by the defence. However, in a move described as unusual by legal experts, the presiding judge allowed Mr Smith’s team to pre-empt Trump’s motion, allowing Mr Smith to outline his case just over a month before the US election.
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