Chutkan unseals much-redacted Jack Smith evidence used to build Trump’s Jan. 6 case

A judge on Friday unsealed nearly 1,900 pages of evidence special counsel Jack Smith assembled in building the election interference case against former President Trump, publicly posting the highly redacted trove.

Though the bulk of the documents are redacted, with many pages fully unviewable, the documents still provide a window into the breadth of Smith’s case — and of Trump’s conduct still unknown to the public.

Much of what readers are able to review is already public, including transcripts from the now-disbanded House Jan. 6 committee, press releases from various secretaries of state, the text of  Trump’s rally speech and phone call with Georgia officials, and even real election certificates showing President Biden as the winner of the 2020 contest. One of the exhibits appears to review much of Trump’s then-Twitter activity from the period of the election.

New details emerged in an attached transcript of an interview with Trump’s then-valet, conducted by the Jan. 6 committee. 

The valet said he informed Trump his speech was “cut off” on TV because his supporters were rioting at the Capitol — drawing frustration, about the speech, from Trump. Then, he got Trump a Diet Coke as the former president watched the riot unfold. 

Based on the transcript, it appeared that the valet reviewed time-stamped images of his interactions with Trump throughout the interview. The transcript was released by House Republicans earlier this year, but they opted to redact that section of the testimony.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who oversees the trial proceedings, released the information against objections from Trump, suggesting his desire to shield the information due to the election amounted to its own form of interference.

“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 wrote in a Thursday night order requiring the documents’ release.

Spread out over four filings totaling 1,889 pages, the trove includes grand jury testimony, communications and other documents assembled by prosecutors.

The exhibits support a 165-page brief filed by Smith earlier this month breaking down his case against Trump in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that determined former presidents retain broad immunity from criminal prosecution for many of their core official actions. 

Prosecutors argue Trump’s effort to thwart the transfer of power was almost entirely carried out as a private citizen. Trump’s attorneys are due to respond in the days following November’s presidential election.

Chutkan will review both sets of filings to determine how the case against Trump may proceed.

In an earlier filing, Smith warned that the government would redact any nonpublic sensitive materials “in their entirety” and that some publicly available material could be redacted if identifying individuals who could face threats or whose future testimony could suffer a “chilling effect” from being revealed.

But the sparse details from the filing leave unclear the extent of the record provided to Chutkan, who must determine which of Trump’s actions in the lead-up to Jan. 6 were part of his core constitutional powers as president, and therefore immune.

The Supreme Court’s July decision ordered prosecutors to remove from the indictment references to Trump’s pressure campaign at the Justice Department, ruling conversations between a president and executive branch officials are protected.

Trump had threatened to topple his Justice Department leadership, installing an acting attorney general who would pursue an investigation into his baseless claims of election fraud.

The court also wrote that Trump’s conversations with then-Vice President Mike Pence would also be presumptively immune but left that and other outstanding questions about the former president’s conduct now rest with Chutkan.

Those questions are expected to ultimately end up back before the Supreme Court. The special counsel’s team is aiming to only have one more round at the high court before trial, and Chutkan has largely sided with their preferred schedule designed with that aim.

Trump faces four counts in his federal election subversion case and has pleaded not guilty. 

Many of Friday’s unsealed documents comprise transcribed interviews before the House Jan. 6 panel from witnesses like then-Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R), who was pressured to overturn President Biden’s victory in his state, and Ruby Freeman, a Georgia election worker who became the center of a false voter fraud conspiracy.

Other unsealed documents include excerpts from Pence’s book, “So Help Me God,” detailing how he resisted Trump’s demands to overturn the election results when presiding over the proceedings on Jan. 6.

Another volume contained dozens of social media posts by Trump or his campaign Facebook, Truth Social and X — including ones the former president published during the Capitol riot.

Despite the extensive walkthrough of his public posts, the unredacted documents do not reveal any of the 32 direct messages from Trump’s X account that the special counsel has in his possession. It remains unclear if those will ever be released.

Updated 1:52 p.m. EDT