U.S. District Court Judge Tayna Chutkan has rejected a motion filed by President Donald J. Trump’s legal team asking that the Biden-Harris Department of Justice’s (DOJ) special counsel, Jack Smith, refrain from publicizing additional documents outlining his lawfare case against the Republican nominee public before the election. The ruling follows the unsealing of Smith’s 165-page legal brief against Trump’s presidential immunity claim last week.
Specifically, Smith is seeking to file an appendix to the immunity brief, which includes grand jury transcripts. “Defendant has now filed an opposition objecting to unsealing any part of the Appendix. ECF No. 259. As in his previous filing, he identifies no specific substantive objections to particular proposed redactions,” Chutkan wrote in her order on Thursday.
The foreign-born, far-left judge added: “For the same reasons set forth in its decision with respect to the Motion, ECF No. 251, 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.”
However, any public filings by Smith will be delayed for at least a week, as Chutkan did grant a seven-day stay on the decision, allowing Trump’s lawyers time to appeal her ruling if they choose.
The National Pulse previously reported that CNN’s senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, called Smith’s decision to file the 165-page immunity brief just a month before the November presidential election an “unprincipled, norm-breaking” attempt to “chip away at Trump’s electoral prospects.”
