Mary Trump Announces ‘Explosive’ Evidence to Take Down Trump

Mary Trump, the estranged niece of Donald Trump, had legal experts weigh in on Friday on newly released audio of the former president who called it “explosive evidence” for the criminal case against him in Washington, D.C.

As part of Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was indicted in August in Washington, D.C., in relation to alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He was charged with conspiring to defraud the government and disenfranchise voters, and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding. Thousands of Trump supporters rallied outside the Capitol building to protest the 2020 results as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Trump had claimed, without any evidence, that the election was stolen from him via widespread voter fraud. The former president has maintained his innocence in the case.

More than 1,200 people have been charged involving the insurrection, according to the latest data from the DOJ, including more than 400 accused of assaulting or impeding law enforcement, which is a felony.

A 2021 interview between Trump and ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl has recently surfaced, with the former president’s niece writing on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday that she gave the audio to a lawyer who “says it’s the explosive evidence Jack Smith needs,” adding that “the audio appears to prove two damning admissions.”

Karl released the audio to CNN to publicize his new book: Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.

Newsweek reached out to Mary Trump and Donald Trump via email for comment.

In the interview audio, Trump can be heard bragging about the size of the crowd on January 6. “But if you look at the real size of that crowd, it was never reported correctly. There were — it’s the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken in front of by far,” the former president said.

In Mary Trump’s newsletter that discussed the interview, former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rogers said, “The fact that he’s recorded saying, basically, ‘I knew that these were my supporters — they were there to do what I wanted them to do to stop the certification’ is good evidence of his participation.”

During the interview, Karl probed Trump and asked, “You told them you were going to go up to the Capitol. Were you just —.”

Trump chimed in, “I — no, I was going to and then Secret Service said you can’t and then by the time — I would have, and then when I get back, I saw — I wanted to go back. I was thinking about going back during the problem to stop the problem, doing it myself. Secret Service didn’t like that idea too much.”

An ex-White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, told the January 6 House select committee last year that Trump allegedly grabbed the wheel of the presidential limousine and shouted at the Secret Service while trying to reach his supporters at the Capitol, recalling him saying, “I’m the f***ing president. Take me up to the Capitol now.”

In addition, attorney Joe Gallina from Call to Activism told Mary Trump in her newsletter: “For hours on January 6, Donald Trump did absolutely nothing to stop the violence, killing, and potential assassination of his own Vice President. If prosecutors draw the nexus that Donald Trump knew these were HIS people, that they turned violent, and did absolutely NOTHING to stop it with such a flimsy excuse as implying the Secret Service didn’t like it, it is superb evidence to show his intentions.”

Meanwhile, Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, has yet to rule on Trump’s legal team’s motion to dismiss the case, with the trial set for March 2024.