Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed hundreds of pages of special counsel Jack Smith‘s highly anticipated evidence against former President Donald Trump on Friday, but they contained few new revelations.
The four-volume document dump consisted of more than 1,800 pages of evidence, but most of it was redacted or previously known information.
One volume contained transcripts of interviews conducted by the defunct Jan. 6 committee, while another contained a compilation of Trump’s social media posts. A third volume included 20 pages of former Vice President Mike Pence’s book, in which he described how he insisted on certifying the 2020 election results in the face of Trump pressuring him to do otherwise.
The filing was the second part of a two-part behemoth motion that Smith submitted to the court to defend his charges against Trump in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity. A sealed version of Smith’s motion, which could contain new or more damning evidence, including testimony heard by the grand jury, is not visible to the public.
The lack of bombshells put forth by Smith came as a letdown to Trump’s critics, who were eager to elevate any newly released information about Trump that could paint him in a negative light less than three weeks before the presidential election.
Because of the Supreme Court’s ruling and other concerns about the case raised by Trump’s legal team, the trial has been postponed indefinitely. Smith’s massive evidence drop, therefore, marked the only opportunity the special counsel had to showcase his evidence against Trump to the public before the election.
The first part of the motion, released on Oct. 2, was a 165-page argument by prosecutors that Trump’s conduct in the aftermath of the 2020 election was not subject to presidential immunity because it was unofficial conduct that was made in his capacity as a presidential candidate.
The first filing contained a few new tidbits of unflattering evidence against Trump and his campaign officials related to the 2020 election. Trump, for example, was overheard saying he would “fight like hell” regardless of if he won or lost the election, according to prosecutors. He also allegedly disregarded then-Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s concerns about whether her participation in an election-related meeting constituted illegal lobbying. Trump also privately said, according to prosecutors, that one of his former lawyers, Sidney Powell, was “unhinged” and had made election fraud allegations that reminded him of the science fiction series Star Trek.
Trump’s legal team must submit a response to Smith’s immunity arguments by Nov. 7. Chutkan will weigh both parties’ arguments and then issue a final decision over which allegations in Smith’s indictment can still be used against Trump based on the Supreme Court’s newly established definition of immunity. From there, the parties will have the option to appeal her decision to the D.C. Circuit Court.
Trump’s attorneys, as well as critics of Chutkan and Smith, have argued that releasing massive documents containing one-sided evidence is prejudicial and improperly interferes with the 2024 election. Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, observed in a recent op-ed in New York that Smith was flouting Department of Justice guidelines that discourage prosecutorial activity that could affect an election.
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