As Trump attempts to avoid facing Jan. 6 charges in court, voters must try him at the polls

In the days since a vice presidential debate in which Trump critic-turned-Trump-acolyte JD Vance refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge has unsealed evidence indicating Trump not only lost but also engaged in a criminal conspiracy in an attempt to illegally steal the election.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who was tapped by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate allegations of criminal election interference, submitted the evidence to Judge Tanya Chutkan after the U.S. Supreme Court granted Trump immunity for his official acts.

Smith did so in order to separate what Trump did as a candidate from what he did as president. Trump can only be criminally charged for his private behavior, and it is up to Judge Chutkan to determine what is private and what is not. But now the American public will have access to every accusation, and we will see it all just weeks before the election.

The irony is rich because the federal election interference case against Trump has been repeatedly delayed as his lawyers sought to keep the case out of court until after the election.

Those delay tactics have resulted in the evidence being released now — barely a month before the election, at a time when it could potentially damage Trump in the court of public opinion.

With the evidence of his alleged misdeeds in full view, Trump could lose undecided voters, then lose the election, and then be held accountable for the charges he currently faces.

That means Trump’s fate lies in the hands of everyday people. Not rich and powerful donors like Elon Musk. Not influential conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. No, Trump will be judged by everyday Americans who have the one thing that can defend our democracy: the vote.

Smith’s 165-page filing uses interviews with scores of witnesses to construct a narrative containing numerous allegations against the former president. For instance, the filing alleges that Trump refused, as far back as July 2020, to say that he would accept the election results. It says that Trump, despite voting by mail himself earlier that year, repeatedly claimed in tweets that mail-in voting would corrupt the election.

After losing to Joe Biden, Trump was directly responsible for “the tinderbox that he purposely ignited on January 6.”

Smith’s filing goes on to say that “The defendant also knew that he had only one last hope to prevent Biden’s certification as President: the large and angry crowd standing in front of him. So, for more than an hour, the defendant delivered a speech designed to inflame his supporters and motivate them to march to the Capitol.”

The filing contains many other nuggets, including the allegation that Trump’s operatives sought to sow chaos during vote counts in places like Detroit and Philadelphia. It says that Trump knew, even as he engaged in a criminal conspiracy to remain in power, that he had lost the election. The filing also says that Trump claimed he would not pay his lawyers if they failed to overturn his election loss.

Trump’s fate lies in the hands of everyday people.

Trump is deeply invested in winning the 2024 election because if he does, he can use the power of the presidency to make this federal investigation go away. However, if Americans truly believe in democracy, then we must also grasp the gravity of the moment.

We are living in a time when millions of our fellow citizens will cast their votes for a man who — if this filing is true — openly sought to strip us of our most sacred right. The world watched Trump send a violent crowd to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and according to Smith’s filing, Trump then watched as the crowd sought to upend the electoral process.

We cannot allow that to happen again. Not after seeing Smith’s filing, and all that Trump allegedly did to undermine the votes of millions of Americans.

The former president seeks to avoid being tried in the courts. In my view, we should try him at the polls.