The indictment focuses mostly on what Trump was told, and the overall implausibility of him thinking he had won. But I wonder if Smith might have more direct evidence than the indictment lets on.
In particular, there have been reports of Trump telling other people that he lost. Here are some of the more prominent examples from the public record:
- “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost.” — President Trump in December 2020, according to Cassidy Hutchinson.
- “A lot of times he’ll tell me that he lost, but he wants to keep fighting it, and he thinks that there might be enough to overturn the election.” — Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, according to Cassidy Hutchinson.
- “Can you believe I lost to this guy?” — Trump while watching Biden on TV after the election, according to Alyssa Farah Griffin,
- “I’ve had a few conversations with the president where he acknowledged he’s lost. He hasn’t acknowledged that he wants to concede, but he acknowledges that he lost the election.” — Trump Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, according to Cassidy Hutchinson.
- “When I didn’t win the election. . . . ” — Trump in 2021, on video, referring to how happy a foreign official was when Trump didn’t win in 2020.
Granted, the indictment does include a tiny bit of this. Perhaps the most notable is Paragraph 83’s Trump quote that “it’s too late for us. We’re going to give that to the next guy.” But there’s much less in the indictment than in the public record.
And for all we know, what is in the public record is only part of the story.