Trump 'resorted to crimes' to overturn 2020 election: special counsel

(FILES) (COMBO) This combination of pictures created on Aug. 5, 2023 shows special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, DC, on Aug. 1, 2023 and former US President Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 8, 2022. (AFP photo)

Donald Trump launched a "private criminal effort" to subvert the 2020 U.S. election and should not be shielded by presidential immunity, Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a court filing unsealed on Wednesday.

Smith, in a 165-page motion arguing for the historic case against Trump to move forward, also provided new evidence of the former president's efforts to overturn the results of the election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump, 78, the Republican candidate in November's White House election, had been scheduled to go on trial in March, but the case was frozen while his lawyers argued that a former president should be immune from criminal prosecution.

The Supreme Court ruled in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office but can be pursued for unofficial acts.

Smith, in the filing unsealed by District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is hearing the case, said Trump should not escape prosecution because "at its core, the defendant's scheme was a private criminal effort."

"The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct," Smith said. "Not so."

"Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one."

Trump, acting as a candidate and not in his official capacity, "resorted to crimes to try to stay in office," the special counsel said.