The judge in the federal January 6, 2021, criminal case against Donald Trump will wait at least seven days before releasing exhibits containing evidence that special counsel Jack Smith is using to argue that the former president is not immune from prosecution.
Trump opposes the release of the heavily redacted exhibits related to the sprawling 165-page brief in which Smith that laid out the election subversion case.
“There should be no further disclosures at this time of the so-called ‘evidence’ that the Special Counsel’s Office has unlawfully cherry-picked and mischaracterized—during early voting in the 2024 Presidential election—in connection with an improper Presidential immunity filing that has no basis in criminal procedure or judicial precedent,” Trump said in a court filing Thursday.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan said later Thursday that she would okay prosecutors’ proposed redactions to the exhibits, but that she was pausing the ruling to release them at the request of Trump, who opposed any disclosure of the exhibits. Trump argued earlier Thursday that if the judge was inclined to release the exhibits, he should have time to “evaluate litigation options.”
Earlier this month, the special counsel revealed never-before-seen information from the federal investigation into the Trump election reversal schemes. Smith’s team previously said that it would provide grand jury testimony, notes from FBI interviews and other materials as exhibits for the judge to review. However, it’s likely that those sensitive materials will continue to be shielded from public view.
Compared to Smith’s minimally redacted 165-page brief, the redactions proposed by prosecutors to the exhibits are expected to keep protect the more sensitive evidence in the case, and it’s likely that the exhibits that are disclosed with redactions cover evidence that was already in the public sphere.
The special counsel’s office previously indicated that, for the exhibits, they have “redacted non-public Sensitive Materials in their entirety,” and that they have also even redacted some of the previously-public material, such as the identities of people targeted in Trump tweets, to protect potential trial witnesses from threats and harassment.
Chutkan is currently weighing how much of Smith’s reworked case against Trump survives under the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling handed down this summer, which said that presidents have at least some immunity for official conduct.
Trump will file his response to Smith’s arguments on November 7.
The headline and story have been updated with additional developments.
