“So What?”

According to special counsel Jack Smith, that was Donald Trump expressing his trademark compassion, care and concern for his vice president, Mike Pence, who was being threatened by the Jan. 6 rioters. Of course, it was Trump himself who had endangered Pence with a post on Twitter (now X) saying that Pence lacked the “courage” to do what Trump believed he should have done — block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

So when an aide rushed into the White House dining room to inform Trump that they were moving Pence to a secure location, the president gave that flippant response. Meanwhile, insurrectionists had built a scaffold outside the Capitol intending to hang the vice president.

As Smith points out in the brief, aides begged Trump to implore his followers to leave the Capitol. Instead, he egged them on with his post about Pence.

“The content of the 2:24 p.m. tweet was not a message sent to address a matter of public concern and ease unrest; it was the message of an angry candidate upon the realization that he would lose power,” Smith wrote.

Smith has included many new details about Trump’s behavior after the 2020 presidential election in a new filing before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will decide whether to press forward with Smith’s prosecution of Trump for criminal conspiracy in an effort to overturn the election result. Trump didn’t want the brief unsealed, and it’s no wonder. So many of the details of his coup attempt are damning.

Smith is doing the nation a great service as he persists with the case, despite a far-right Supreme Court that has suggested it is willing to allow our democracy to fall to a dictator. In a June decision that will surely be counted by historians as among the worst in high court history, the court ruled that a president is immune from criminal prosecution for “official acts.”

That sounds as though Trump, if reelected, would have the power to persecute his political enemies, as he has promised to do. Even given the political views of the six GOP-appointed jurists, who tolerate clear bribery in their midst, it is still astounding that they ruled as they did. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.”

The majority opinion instructed Chutkan to review Smith’s case to see if the charges overcame the high hurdles they set. In the latest brief, Smith has done an excellent job of pointing out evidence that Trump was not acting as president when he stoked the insurrection, but rather as a failed candidate. And most of the details Smith has gathered come from insiders who worked for Trump and were questioned under oath.

Another troubling detail came from an aide who allegedly overheard Trump talking to his wife, Melania; his daughter, Ivanka; and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on Marine One. Trump allegedly said, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

In a development that sounds as if it came from the pen of George Orwell, Trump and his allies have persuaded many Americans that there was no violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. In his debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, went so far as to insist that Trump “peacefully gave over power.” That is a bright, shining lie.

When asked about the insurrection, Trump loyalists insist that they are “looking to the future.” That was the vague answer Vance gave during the debate, when he refused to acknowledge that Trump had lost the 2020 race. As Walz pointed out, the reason Vance was on the stage as nominee, rather than Pence, is because Vance is prepared to endorse the Big Lie. Pence refused.

This has everything to do with the future — the future of democracy.

Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.