Attorneys representing Donald Trump have threatened legal repercussions against the judge overseeing the former president’s January 6 election interference trial, arguing against the scheduled release of more documents pertaining to special counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page unsealed motion .
In a filing Thursday—just making the deadline to object, under seal, to the release of Smith’s redacted appendix—Trump’s team argued that there should be “no further disclosures” of Smith’s “cherry-picked and mischaracterized” evidence. If the court decides to release more information anyway, then Trump’s lawyers requested that Judge Tanya Chutkan delay doing so while the Republican presidential nominee weighs his litigation options related to her decision.
“If the Court decides to release additional information relating to the Office’s filing, in the Appendix or otherwise, President Trump respectfully requests that the Court stay that determination for a reasonable period of time so that President Trump can evaluate litigation options relating to the decision,” John Lauro and Todd Blanche wrote .
In the same filing, Trump asked Chutkan to limit the amount of evidence released ahead of the trial in consideration of the election schedule, a plea that has not swayed her decision-making in the past.
Shortly after the filing was made public, Chutkan issued a court order giving Trump’s team seven days to weigh in on the redactions, while also throwing his team’s threatening language back at them.
“For the same reasons set forth in its decision with respect to the Motion… the court determines that the Government’s proposed redactions to the Appendix are appropriate, and that Defendant’s blanket objections to further unsealing are without merit. As the court has stated previously, ‘Defendant’s concern with the political consequences of these proceedings’ is not a cognizable legal prejudice,” Chutkan wrote. “The court will grant Defendant’s request for a stay so that he can ‘evaluate litigation options’.”
It’s unclear what exactly the appendix would include, but it could offer insight into what former Vice President Mike Pence and other key witnesses shared with investigators, along with transcripts from the grand jury.
Reading between the lines of the filing, court reporters suggested that Trump’s attorneys were referring to a “writ of mandamus,” which would indicate their intention to have a higher court step in to undermine Chutkan’s authority in the case and prevent the appendix being made public.
Earlier this month, Smith’s team released an eye-opening report that included revelations about Trump’s behavior ahead of and on January 6, outlining what Smith described in the redacted document as Trump’s “private criminal conduct.”
“At its core, the defendant’s scheme was a private one,” prosecutors wrote in the massive motion. “He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”
The motion was broken into four separate sections: The first section outlined Smith’s case against Trump, while the second offered a roadmap to aid Chutkan in determining which actions undertaken by Trump were considered “official,” due to a July Supreme Court ruling that redefined executive protections by expanding the definition of presidential immunity.
The third section of Smith’s motion tied in how the principles will apply to Trump’s case, and the fourth section featured a conclusion requesting Chutkan rule that the actions outlined in the entirety of the document do not fall within the fresh definition of immunity.
The Supreme Court handed Trump one of the biggest wins of his career in July, when they ruled 6–3 to expand a president’s immunity and redefine what constitutes an “official act,” effectively deciding that Trump could not be held accountable for some of his behavior with regard to attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor feared for the future of a country that legally permits the executive branch authority to commit crimes under the cloak of the office, arguing that the court’s decision made a “mockery” of the constitutional principle that “no man is above the law.” She warned that the court’s “own misguided wisdom” gave Trump “all the immunity he asked for and more.”
This story has been updated.
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