A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Former President Trump will stand for election this November before standing trial for his effort to overturn the last election.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
But the public does now have evidence that Trump's actions to undo his 2020 defeat amount to a crime. A judge has released the prosecutor's newest version of their case. It's their argument that they have the goods to convict Trump even after a Supreme Court ruling put some of his actions off limits.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson is here to share more about them. So, Carrie, you mentioned that the January 6 case against Donald Trump is not even going to trial this year, so why this new evidence now?
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: This is all an effort by the Justice Department to keep alive this election interference case against Donald Trump. Remember, the Supreme Court this past summer gave Trump and future presidents some substantial immunity from prosecution for their official acts in the White House. In these new court papers, special counsel Jack Smith is taking pains to show Trump was acting as a political candidate, not a president, almost four years ago when he allegedly tried to overturn the result of that election. And prosecutors have laid out some facts now about Trump's role in a scheme to replace the real electors with slates of phony officials in key swing states and about what Trump did and didn't do in late 2020 and early 2021.
MARTÍNEZ: So didn't the House committee, though, those public hearings, Carrie, didn't they lay all this out already? I mean, what's new about this filing?
JOHNSON: Well, the House investigators dug up a lot of information, but the Justice Department actually had subpoena power. And they had access to some of Trump's campaign aides and to former Vice President Mike Pence. The new filing mentions pages of notes Pence took about his meetings with Trump and outside advisers where they said this whole thing is up to Pence. Prosecutors say Trump himself was tweeting an attack on Pence from the White House on January 6 as the rioters ransacked the Capitol building. And then after an aide rushed in to describe the chaos and danger there, Trump allegedly said so what? The former president also allegedly made fun of one of his private lawyers, Sidney Powell, for making what he called crazy claims about election fraud.
MARTÍNEZ: So how's Trump responding to these new revelations?
JOHNSON: A spokesman for Trump's campaign said this court filing is an attempt to interfere in the current election and help Kamala Harris. Trump's spokesman added that prosecutors are engaging in a partisan witch hunt. And it's worth noting that the trial judge in this case, Tanya Chutkan, has said there's no support for the idea DOJ was motivated by partisan bias. She's rejected Trump's claim this was a vindictive or selective prosecution. Trump will have a chance to respond in writing in the coming weeks. If he disagrees with this judge's ruling, he's likely to appeal all the way back to the Supreme Court.
And a key fight to watch now is how much evidence prosecutors will be allowed to use about Mike Pence. Trump says all of that should be out of bounds, but prosecutors say they're relying on Pence not as the former vice president but because he had a narrow role in charge of the certification of the electoral count in early 2021.
MARTÍNEZ: OK, but what if Trump wins in November? So what happens to all the work the DOJ has put in?
JOHNSON: The former president is likely to direct new officials at the Justice Department to get rid of his federal case in D.C., and also to drop an appeal of the Florida classified documents case against him, too. But if Trump loses at the ballot box, it's still possible he could face trial in D.C. probably not before 2026. That's because the Supreme Court's going to hear this case again before it ever gets to a jury.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thank you.
JOHNSON: My pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTÍNEZ: Israel is reporting its first military casualties from its ground invasion into southern Lebanon.
INSKEEP: The ground operations are one part of a campaign against Hezbollah, the political and militant group that dominates parts of that country. The Israeli air campaign includes a strike last night that hit a building in central Beirut. Health authorities there now say that nearly 1,400 people have been killed in recent weeks.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Eyder Peralta is in Beirut. So Eyder, what do we know about what's happening in southern Lebanon where Israeli troops have crossed over?
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: So look, we understand that the fighting along the border is fierce. Both the Israeli military and Hezbollah say that they are engaging each other at close range. And Israel yesterday said that eight of its soldiers have been killed in the fighting. Israel has described this as a limited ground operation, but we don't actually know what that means. What we know is that Israel has ordered the evacuation of some 50 villages across a wide region, and that region almost reaches into the central part of the country. And the fear here is that this will turn into a prolonged war that could engulf the whole of Lebanon.
MARTÍNEZ: Eyder, I mentioned that you are actually in the capital of Beirut. What are you seeing there?
PERALTA: I mean, overnight, there was yet another Israeli missile strike very close to where I am. State media says the offices of a local health authority were hit and that seven people were killed, including two volunteer medics. But most of the strikes are happening just south of here in a neighborhood called Dahiyeh. And it's a Hezbollah stronghold. It's the same neighborhood where a huge blast killed Hezbollah's longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah last week. And yesterday, Hezbollah called reporters, and they gave us a tour of the damage down there. I want to play some of my reporting.
(SOUNDBITE OF GRAVEL CLATTERING)
PERALTA: As you get close to the sight of a blast, you see all these fragments of life strewn in the middle of the streets - handwritten notes, a colorful plastic plate, a laundry basket, the cushion of a sofa. It feels like almost everyone in this neighborhood has left. Stores are closed. Apartments are empty. But we find a guy in his mid-30s smoking a cigarette near a crumbled building. He doesn't give us his name for security reasons.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: There's no one left. Yeah. Everyone left. It's only me.
PERALTA: He's a gamer, plays a commando simulation game. And he jokes that these days, the booms of the airstrikes around him give his games a more realistic feel.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Well, you know, I live, like, in a building like this one, in the middle of nowhere. Like, they will hit that. Why not?
PERALTA: So why are you staying? I ask him.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Well, I have electricity, water, internet and food. I'm good.
PERALTA: But that's not entirely true. He actually has two cats but has nowhere to leave them, so he won't leave his apartment without them. Hezbollah guide us through the neighborhood. At every bomb blast, they put up a picture of their slain leader, Hassan Nasrallah. They stop at what they tell us was an apartment building. All we see is rubble, concrete, mangled metal, a fire still smoldering in the middle. A young guy climbs through the rubble. He wades through the smoke and pumps his hands in the air.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting in Arabic).
PERALTA: "We will always choose death over humiliation," they chant.
MARTÍNEZ: Wow, so defiance despite the damage. Any sense, though, where all this is going, Eyder?
PERALTA: I mean, people here on the ground are simply worried about survival, but the world is watching Israel and Iran. It was just a day ago that Iran launched nearly 200 missiles to Israel. And so the big question is how will Israel respond? The U.S. has said they don't support an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, but the size and scope of that Israeli retaliation could mean a deescalation or the beginning of a much broader, much bloodier conflict.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Eyder Peralta reporting from Beirut. Thank you.
PERALTA: Thank you, A.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTÍNEZ: A jury in Memphis is expected to begin deliberations today in a high-profile police brutality case.
INSKEEP: Police video shows a group of officers beating Tyre Nichols, a Black man they'd pulled over during a traffic stop last year. The jury repeatedly saw footage showing the officers, who were also Black, brutalizing Nichols. He died three days later. That video is evidence in a federal civil rights trial.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Debbie Elliott has been covering the trial, joins us now from Memphis. Debbie, let's just start off with the charges that these officers are facing.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: OK, three fired detectives - Justin Smith, Tadarrius Bean and Demetrius Haley - are accused of several felonies here. Depriving Tyre Nichols of his civil rights by excessive use of force, willful failure to intervene, deliberate indifference to his serious medical need, and finally, conspiring to cover up the attack and obstruct justice. You'll remember the beating happened after a traffic stop in January of last year. Now, these officers were part of the so-called Scorpion task force. It was created to root out street crime in Memphis. And it was known for aggressive policing tactics. The five officers involved here were immediately fired. That task force has since been disbanded. Two of those former officers pleaded guilty and testified against the others during this trial.
MARTÍNEZ: How are federal prosecutors laying out their case?
ELLIOTT: You know, that this was just a beatdown - that these ex-cops used unreasonable force. It was five of them against one 175-pound man. During closing arguments, federal prosecutor Kathryn Gilbert said these officers didn't count on surveillance video catching what happened when they thought no one was watching. She urged the jurors to trust their eyes - quote, "you saw the punches, you saw the kicks, you saw the baton strikes."
The video also shows officers seemingly bragging about the beating as Nichols gasps for his life on the pavement. Gilbert pointed out that some of the language that they used afterward, you know - they said, quote, "hit him," "beat that man" and "we about to kill that man." She also emphasized how Nichols had his hands in front of his face to protect himself as he was calling out for his mother, who lived just a block away. Nichols, who was 29, died, as you said, three days after the beating. And the coroner testified it was homicide from blunt force trauma.
MARTÍNEZ: Wow. The defense - how are these former officers trying to explain what happened?
ELLIOTT: You know, each defense lawyer tried to clear their individual clients in different kinds of ways. But the general theme from all three of them is that this was a high-risk traffic stop and that the officers acted reasonably after Nichols ran a red light and then failed to stop when pursued by a police vehicle with blue lights on. John Keith Perry, who represents Tadarrius Bean, denied that officers were bragging about the beating. He said instead that the jury should interpret that as they were commenting that, quote, "this man was taking all that they had."
And then Martin Zummach, who is Justin Smith's lawyer - he focused on Tyre Nichols' behavior. He said Nichols made choices of how to respond that night, asking, quote, "is there a constitutional right to run from police?" So now it's up to the jury to sort of weigh all these arguments and the evidence they heard, and we'll hear what they decide.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Debbie Elliott in Memphis. Debbie, thank you very much.
ELLIOTT: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
