U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s preelection report in former President Donald Trump’s D.C. criminal case related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Smith’s 165-page report was published Wednesday, just over one month before Election Day, as a final Hail Mary to convince Americans of Trump’s guilt while voters turn in ballots.
“The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct,” Smith wrote. “Not so.”
The ensuing document outlines prosecutors’ case against the Republican presidential nominee, a case Chutkan’s court was unable to litigate before the election closes in November. Progress on the trial was delayed this summer when the Supreme Court ruled presidents enjoy broad immunity for official acts in office. While Chutkan repeatedly postponed the court’s initial trial date this year because of the Supreme Court’s decision to consider presidential immunity, the federal judge overseeing Trump’s Jan. 6 trial scoffed at the high court’s ruling earlier this month in court.
In her Wednesday order that allowed prosecutors to release the source-redacted report, the judge, who has a well-documented animus toward the former president and his supporters, accused Trump’s legal team of engaging in “bad-faith partisan bias.”
“These accusations, for which Defendant provides no support, continue a pattern of defense filings focusing on political rhetoric rather than addressing the legal issues at hand,” Chutkan wrote. “Not only is that focus unresponsive and unhelpful to the
