Judge unseals troves of evidence in Trump Jan. 6 case

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the release of nearly 2,000 pages of evidence special counsel Jack Smith intends to use against former President Donald Trump. Smith, who was appointed two years ago, alleges that Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump’s counsel fought to keep the evidence sealed, arguing that releasing so much information so close to the Nov. 5 election constituted election interference. Attorneys argued the evidence would taint voters’ opinions of Trump and boost Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. But Chutkan rejected the arguments on the grounds that the public has a right to see available evidence before trial.

What was in the documents? Most of the 1,889 pages unsealed were heavily redacted. Most of the unredacted material is information that was already publicly available. The court released the evidence in four volumes.

• Volume I contains transcripts of the interviews the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 conducted in 2021. It redacts the names of witnesses interviewed but still provides some identifying information. Witnesses gave accounts of Trump personally calling them to ask about possible legal pathways to overturn the 2020 election results. The transcripts do include one previously redacted conversation with a White House valet. He testified that Trump came back after speaking at the Ellipse the afternoon of Jan. 6 to watch the news. The valet said he brought the former president a Diet Coke, and then Trump watched footage of his speech and news coverage of ongoing riots at the U.S. Capitol.

• Volume II contains hundreds of social media posts on Trump’s Twitter account. They all center around Trump’s claims that ballots were fraudulently cast. His Twitter account was deactivated on Jan. 7, but Elon Musk reinstated him in November 2022 after purchasing Twitter, now branded as X.

• Volume III contains transcripts of several Trump rallies and speeches, both in Washington and in battleground states like Georgia. He claimed at these events that the election was being stolen from him. The evidence also includes the previously leaked transcript of his call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump controversially claimed to have found uncounted votes in the state. The third volume also contains documents from Trump electors in battleground states who signed electoral slates even though Biden won. It concludes with a series of information sheets and public speeches from state legislatures countering the Trump campaign’s claims of outcome-determinative fraud in their states.

• Volume IV is heavily redacted but publishes internal 2020 campaign documents outlining scenarios in which then-Vice President Mike Pence could have refused to certify the electoral count in Congress. Many of the instructions hinged on Pence not asking permission from either a joint session of Congress or the judicial branch. It also contains several fundraising emails from Trump’s campaign, his speech on the Ellipse, and his message ordering protesters to go home.

Why now? Smith is continuing to press his case in Washington, even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Trump has immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while he was president. Smith plans to argue that many of Trump’s fraud claims fall under campaigning, and were not part of his official presidential duties. The evidence revealed shows that Smith plans to rely heavily on the interviews the Jan. 6 committee conducted. The evidence indicates Smith also may outline a trail of public events and interviews to argue that Trump was conspiring to claim the election was fraudulent well before Election Day. The valet interview may signal that part of Smith’s prosecution will rely on time-stamped evidence that Trump knew that violence was breaking out after his speech.

What is the fallout? Political pundits predicted that the release of documents could be an “October surprise”—a political reveal of shocking information about a candidate shortly before an election. But much of the unsealed evidence was already previously available. As of Friday afternoon, neither the Trump campaign nor the Harris campaign had issued statements about the documents.