The special counsel, Jack Smith, has asked a federal judge to make public a substantial amount of the evidence that he and his deputies have collected during nearly two years of investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a court filing unsealed on Friday.
In the filing, Mr. Smith described the sorts of information about Mr. Trump that he would like to reveal in a public version of a lengthy secret brief that he submitted under seal on Thursday evening to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the election interference case in Federal District Court in Washington.
The sealed brief, which may have been as long as 180 pages with a lengthy additional attachment of exhibits, was Mr. Smith’s attempt to defend his indictment of Mr. Trump against the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting him a broad form of immunity against criminal prosecution for official acts.
Mr. Smith told Judge Chutkan that the public version of his brief should include quotations and summaries of grand jury testimony from — and interviews with — several chief witnesses in the case, including top White House officials like former Vice President Mike Pence. But to protect lesser-known witnesses from harassment, Mr. Smith said the names of people not already identified in the indictment should be redacted.
“The public’s interest is fully vindicated by accessing the substantive material in the government’s filing,” Mr. Smith wrote. “For example, the unredacted substance of what a witness said is more important, for purposes of public access, than the redacted identity of the specific person who said it.”
Both Mr. Smith’s filing and the subsequent discussions of how much of its evidence should be released are a direct result of the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity. That ruling granted Mr. Trump — and all other future former presidents — wide protections against prosecution from charges arising from most of their official actions.
As part of the decision, the court ordered Judge Chutkan to sort through the indictment against Mr. Trump and decide which of its many allegations should be tossed out because of the new immunity rules and which could survive and go trial.
Mr. Smith’s lengthy brief was the first round of that sorting process and was filed under seal because much of the evidence he used to make his case that the charges should survive came from sensitive sources, like grand jury testimony. Those types of evidence are typically shielded by rules of criminal procedure and, in this particular case, by a protective order.
Judge Chutkan has power to decide how much of Mr. Smith’s evidence can be unsealed. That could perhaps add to the wealth of information about Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power. A House select committee, which investigated the events leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, unearthed significant evidence against Mr. Trump during its own inquiry two years ago.
In a brief order issued on Friday, the judge gave Mr. Trump’s legal team until noon on Tuesday to file any objections to Mr. Smith’s proposals for releasing the material. She also imposed a deadline of Oct. 10 for any objections to Mr. Smith’s request to keep of all of the nonpublic, sensitive materials in the exhibits attached to his brief entirely under seal.
A fight is likely.
Even before Mr. Smith filed his lengthy brief, Mr. Trump’s legal team had objected that it would amount to a “selective and biased account,” and complained that it would be “tantamount to a premature and improper special counsel report.”
If it were made public, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said, it “will undoubtedly enter the dialogue around the election.”
At a hearing this month, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, John F. Lauro, said they would also want to make public their own selections of evidence that is now under seal — contending, without offering details, that portions are exculpatory.
He also said that “we would have a right to do that during this sensitive time,” referring to the election.
Judge Chutkan has repeatedly said that she will not treat the timing of the coming election as “relevant” when making decisions about the legal case before her.
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