(Headline USA) Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday filed, under seal, a legal brief that prosecutors said contained sensitive and previously unseen evidence in the federal lawfare case charging former President Donald Trump for his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
Critics said the brief would likely be unveiled as an “October surprise” pushing out derogatory information on Trump just before the Nov. 5 election with no time for him to defend himself.
Judge Chutkan is deliberately teeing up hitting Trump with Jack Smith and Democrats October surprise in the final two weeks or so of the election.
And yet she and Jack Smith, AG Garland, Kamala, Biden, and the Dems will pretend it’s all politics-free.
Time and again, they count… https://t.co/qfm7WGHUzU
— Jeff Clark (@JeffClarkUS) September 27, 2024
With Smith and partisan, Obama-appointed Judge Tanya Chutkan having failed in their efforts to fast-track a full trial before voters choose the next president, a hearing on the brief would amount to a sort of de-facto bench trial.
If elected, Trump almost without a doubt would appoint officials at the Justice Department who would drop the case altogther and withdraw the charges.
According to The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, the collusion between the D.C. District judge and the Justice Department special counsel constituted a “horrific violation of due process.”
This is such a horrific violation of due process and the corporate media don't care because they hate Trump and want him eliminated. https://t.co/2hbNaRTlpz
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 26, 2024
Smith’s brief was aimed at defending a revised and stripped-down indictment that prosecutors filed last month to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that conferred broad immunity on former presidents.
Prosecutors said earlier in September that they intended to present a “detailed factual proffer,” including multiple exhibits and excerpts of grand jury testimony, to Chutkan in hopes of persuading her that the remaining allegations in the new indictment should not be dismissed and should continue to be part of the case.
A spokesman for the Smith team, Peter Carr, confirmed that prosecutors had met their 5 p.m. deadline for filing a brief.
Though the brief is not currently accessible to the public, prosecutors have said they intend to file a redacted version that could be made available later.
Some, including investigative journalist Julie Kelly, warned that Smith would attempt to cherry-pick negative information to selectively unseal from the brief, while keeping anonymous the sources of it—a ploy he previously attempted in his Florida classified documents case.
Although the effort failed in Florida under Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, Chutkan has routinely let her radical ideology cloud her sense of jurisprudence, even leading to a rebuke from Supreme Court in its decision on the immunity question.
NEW: Jack Smith just filed his request to file unredacted motion (opening brief) under seal then a redacted version pending Chutkan's review on public docket.
Smith wants to use cherry-picked quotations and citations but not identify who said it or from where it originated (GJ… pic.twitter.com/xB9JaD8tuc
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) September 27, 2024
The Trump team has vigorously objected to the filing, calling it unnecessary and saying it could improperly influence the upcoming presidential election.
“The Court does not need 180 pages of ‘great assistance’ from the Special Counsel’s Office to develop the record necessary to address President Trump’s Presidential immunity defense,” Trump’s lawyers wrote, calling it “tantamount to a premature and improper Special Counsel report.”
The brief is the opening salvo in a restructured criminal case following the Supreme Court’s opinion in July that said former presidents are presumptively immune for official acts they take in office but are not immune for their private acts.
In their new indictment, Smith’s team contended that some acts did not deserve immunity protections and will now seek to argue that Trump perpetrated such acts.
Chutkan is now responsible for making a decision on the brief. She stated Trump’s team has until Tuesday to issue an objection.
She has acknowledged that her decisions are likely to be subject to additional appeals to the Supreme Court.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
