Filing Is No October Surprise
Terry H. Schwadron
Oct. 4, 2024
File the public whining over release of a prosecution file about Donald Trump’s involvement in events leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt directly into the Hypocrisy folder.
Trump and supporters on right-leaning news sites are seeing the timing and the existence of the “one-sided” filing as Breitbart labeled them — as unfair partisan interference in the election, Trump’s arguments towards ignoring the whole affair.
OI course they are one-sided: It is the prosecution case. Of course, the timing stinks if you are running for president. But the timing is a result of the delays that Trump and his legal team had forced through appeals filed since late last year.
The document was a required filing to the federal district court ordered by the Supreme Court to review just what evidence from the case may have crossed over a boundary that the high court had set for “presumed immunity” by a sitting president against criminal charges.
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team served up a 165-page examination of evidence that it promises to produce at trial, including summations of some witness interviews, that depicted “candidate” Trump’s communications and behaviors between the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The Special Counsel sees that evidence as proving the case not only as surviving an “immunity” barrier, but as a strong case for conviction on the four charges listed that amount to defrauding the United States.
This document was not a court judgment. It was an argument that the Judge Tanya Chutkan required from both sides to examine exactly what evidence and therefore charges could survive the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. If the judge rules on these issues after Election Day, there will be a trial — or another appeal of her ruling.
The prosecutors provided a detailed court filing that reviewed several now-familiar, overlapping, and baseless schemes that sought to overturn election results that left Joe Biden the winner of the election. It included notes and interviews with former Vice President Mike Pence that showed Trump was aware of losing and of the illegality of asking Pence to overturn certification of Electoral College votes, and evidence of Trump’s apparent nonchalance to hear that Pence might be in physical danger on Jan. 6. The filing included more detail than had been made public previously but it is a filing about what evidence can be presented, not about a judgment.
The fact is that none of this disclosures will persuade supporters not to vote for Trump and Trump is going to appeal every aspect of his continuing legal cases. For all the bombast about “weaponizing” the Justice Department to pursue him before the election, Trump has himself to blame for all of it.
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