A month from the US election, a new court document has brought Donald Trump's alleged crimes back into focus
analysis
Donald Trump was angered by the court document's release.
Welcome back to your weekly update on US politics. This week, North America correspondent Barbara Miller catches you up on the biggest developments in America, with election day just a month away.
Donald Trump likely won't face court again before next month's election but that doesn't mean the wheels aren't still turning on the criminal cases against him.
This week brought a reminder that special prosecutor Jack Smith is doggedly trying to bring the former president to trial on charges he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The judge in what's known as the January 6 case unsealed a 165-page filing by Smith's team. In it, prosecutors argue Trump can be tried on the charges, despite a Supreme Court ruling that grants presidents widespread immunity from criminal prosecution.
"Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one," the motion states.
The filing details some of the evidence Smith hopes to present should the case ever go to trial.
New details about Donald Trump's alleged actions on January 6, 2021, have been revealed in court documents.
While the tenor of it might not come as a surprise to Trump's vice-president, Mike Pence, it certainly won't make for pleasant reading for him.
"So what?" Trump is alleged to have responded on the afternoon of January 6 when an aide rushed into the Oval Office dining room to inform the president his deputy had been rushed to a secure location after an angry mob stormed the Capitol, some of them calling for the vice-president to be hanged. The aide said they had hoped Trump would take action to ensure Pence's safety.
At another time, a lawyer told Trump his allegations of election fraud would be hard to prove. The then-president, according to the court filing, said "the details don't matter".
He's alleged to have expressed a similar sentiment to family members.
A White House staffer who was travelling with him reported overhearing Trump say, "It doesn't matter if you won or lost the election, you still have to fight like hell."
Trump has fired off a series of angry posts in response to the court filing, accusing Smith and the Department of Justice (DOJ) of attempting to interfere in the 2024 election by releasing the information so close to voting day.
"The DOJ pushed out this latest 'hit job' today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The document was actually filed last week but unsealed this week by Judge Tanya Chutkan.
A cordial Midwestern encounter
The issue of who won the 2020 election certainly came up in this week's only debate between the 2024 vice-presidential candidates.
Harris's running mate managed to highlight that his opponent is not willing to say publicly that his boss, Trump, lost the election.
"Did he lose the 2020 election?" Tim Walz asked towards the end of the duel, hosted in New York by CBS.
"Tim, I'm focused on the future", Republican VP-candidate JD Vance said.
"That is a damning non-answer," Walz responded shaking his head.
On the whole, it was a cordial debate where the two Midwestern men hoping to become vice-president took aim not at each other, but at Harris and Trump, in a discussion covering abortion, immigration, climate change and the economy.
There was even a touching moment when Walz drew on an encounter his son had with gun violence.
Gus Walz is the teenager whose emotional reaction to his dad's convention speech went viral.
Gus Walz was overcome with emotion when his father spoke at the Democratic National Convention.
In the debate, Walz Senior revealed Gus had witnessed a shooting at a community centre.
"I didn't know your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting and I'm sorry about that," Vance said, turning to Walz.
"I appreciate you saying that," Walz responded.
"Christ have mercy," Vance added.
It was a moment that might not have taken place had CBS followed the same rules that were in place for the two presidential debates, between Joe Biden and Trump and then Trump and Harris.
In those clashes, the microphone of each candidate was muted as the other spoke.
CBS left them open, but the network said ahead of time it would reserve the right to mute them.
That's exactly what happened when Vance continued to argue over the top of the moderators after they fact-checked him on a question related to the false claims he and Trump have amplified that Haitian migrants in Ohio are eating pets.
"Gentlemen, the audience can't hear you because your mics are cut," CBS anchor Margaret Brennan said, smiling.
Walz appeared nervous from the outset of the debate and tripped over his words and thoughts.
At one point he got so muddled he suggested he had made friends with school shooters.
Misspeaking is becoming a bit of trademark of Walz, the governor of Minnesota.
His imprecise statements around his military service, his wife's fertility treatments and the exact time he was first in China have all come under scrutiny.
The Ohio senator, Yale law graduate and bestselling author Vance was the smoother performer for most of the debate.
Snap polls suggested viewers were pretty evenly divided over who ultimately came out on top, though in one very small survey of uncommitted swing-state voters Vance was the clear winner.
The good or bad news, depending on how you look at it, is that typically vice-presidential debates don't move the needle too much on the polls, but then not much does.
As you're probably tired of hearing now, who wins this election is likely to come down to a very small number of voters in a handful of swing states.
A storm hits the battlegrounds
A couple of those key states were in the path of Hurricane Helene, which made landfall last week in Florida and tore across the south-east, causing widespread destruction.
Kamala Harris surveyed the damage in August, Georgia, with the local mayor.
At time of writing, more than 200 people are reported to have died, with the highest number of fatalities in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Georgia and North Carolina are considered swing states.
As George W Bush (and Scott Morrison) could tell you, being seen to be slow to respond to a natural disaster, particularly if you're on holiday at the time, can be a disaster in itself.
Trump was keen to make hay with the event, claiming, falsely that the Biden administration was not responding to the hurricane and that the president had not called the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp.
The Republican candidate was quick to visit the state of Georgia, which he famously lost by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020.
Biden and Harris were forced to explain that they were holding off a little on touring the storm-ravaged areas so as not to interfere with the work of emergency services.
Both have now travelled to affected communities, and they and Trump may return before the month's out.
Voters in those states could be swayed by how well or badly they feel they have been supported in recovery efforts.
Donald Trump visited Georgia, one of the most severely storm-damaged states.
There could also be some practical issues around mail-in ballots potentially lost and even the availability and accessibility of polling sites in the worst affected areas.
Hurricane Helene, like other storms before it, could play a role in November's election.
In case you missed it: A centenarian keen to make his voice heard
Former Democratic president Jimmy Carter turned 100 this week.
That's a little surprising because it's been 19 months since it was announced he was entering hospice care, a sign that his life was nearing its end.
On a rare public sighting last November at the funeral of his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, Carter looked very frail.
Jimmy Carter attends the tribute service for his wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter.
The one-term president's grandson recently suggested the reason his "PawPaw" was still hanging on was so that he could vote for Kamala Harris.
Early voting begins in the middle of the month in Georgia, Carter's home state and a key battleground.
Different states have different rules around whether the ballot of an early voter who dies before election day can be counted.
In 2020, Trump and his supporters made false claims that large numbers of dead people's votes were being counted, including in Georgia.
The claims are outlined in Smith's newly unsealed court filing.
The document states that Trump continued to press claims that a large enough number of dead voters' ballots in Georgia had been counted to sway the result.
According to the document, a campaign lawyer put the number of actual dead voters whose ballots were counted at around 12, a tiny fraction of the 10,000 Trump and his surrogates were claiming.
If the results in Georgia and other key swing states are close again more challenges of voter eligibility are likely to follow.
Jimmy Carter will have to hang on a few more weeks to be absolutely sure his vote counts.
By：https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-04/trump-indictment-vice-president-debate-week-us-politics/104431336(责任编辑：admin)
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