The Obama-appointed judge overseeing Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case against President Donald Trump has just released court documents to the public as Election Day is now under three weeks away.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan released the anti-Trump documents on Friday.
The hundreds of pages of documents contain “evidence” that Smith has submitted to the court.
The documents include unproven allegations against Trump.
Chutkan ordered that additional documents be made public on Thursday night as Trump begins to take a nationwide lead over Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
The documents are Smith’s appendix of exhibits in the fight over whether Trump has a level of presidential immunity that negates the charges against him.
Trump and his team have blasted the move as a witch hunt and an attempt at election interference to help Harris’s struggling campaign.
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said:
“Radical Democrats are hell-bent on interfering in the presidential election on behalf of Lyin’ Kamala Harris.
“With just over two weeks until Election Day, President Trump is dominating this race, and Crazed Liberals throughout the Deep State are freaking out.”
Cheung added, “As mandated by the Supreme Court’s historic decision on Presidential Immunity and other vital jurisprudence, this entire case is a sham and a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely — as should ALL of the remaining Democrat hoaxes.”
The majority of pages released remain under seal and are not viewable by the public.
Much of the unsealed material has been previously released in some form, including transcripts by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6.
Other documents include old Trump campaign press releases, fundraising emails, White House press conference transcripts, and news articles.
In the order to release the documents, Chutkan cited Trump’s claim that the “asymmetric release of charged allegations and related documents during early voting creates a concerning appearance of election interference.”
According to the judge, there is a public interest for courts to avoid involving themselves in elections.
However, Chutkan argues that “it is in fact Defendant’s requested relief that risks undermining that public interest.”
“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute — or appear to be — election interference,” she argued.
The judge added that the court would continue keeping political considerations out of decisions, despite the defense’s request.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges brought against him by Smith.
The Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that a president is immune from prosecution for official acts.
Much of the “evidence” submitted by Smith was considered official acts, such as communications between Trump and his then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Smith was then required to file another indictment against Trump.
He revised the charges in an effort to navigate the Supreme Court ruling.
The new indictment kept the prior criminal charges but narrowed and reframed the allegations against Trump after the high court’s ruling that gave broad immunity to former presidents.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in the new indictment as well.
In a filing unsealed earlier this month, Smith outlines a “factual proffer,” alleging Trump “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office” after the 2020 presidential election.
“With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,” Smith wrote.
Smith claims that the “throughline of these efforts was deceit.”
He claims that Trump and alleged co-conspirators engaged in a conspiracy to interfere with the federal government function by which the nation collects and counts election results.
Smith argues that Trump interfered in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act (ECA).
He accuses Trump of leading a “conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding in which Congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election and a conspiracy against the rights of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted.”
No comments:
Post a Comment