Donald Trump Faces Deadline To Stop Jack Smith Evidence

Former President Donald Trump has been given seven days to challenge the disclosure of additional evidence in his election fraud case.
Judge Tanya Chutkan paused the potentially embarrassing release so that Trump’s legal team could assess their options.
“The court will grant Defendant’s request for a stay so that he can ‘evaluate litigation options,’ and hereby STAYS this decision for seven days,” the judge wrote on Thursday.
Chutkan, who approved additional evidence being unsealed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, was quoting from an application by Trump’s lawyers. They had requested “that the Court stay that determination for a reasonable period of time so that [he] can evaluate litigation options relating to the decision.”
Newsweek sought email comment from Trump’s attorney on Friday.
Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights in connection with an alleged pressure campaign on state officials to reverse the 2020 election results.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and repeatedly said he is the victim of a political witch hunt. He has accused Smith of attempting to interfere in the 2024 presidential election by prosecuting him.
On October 2, Chutkan unsealed a 165-page evidence brief in the case, against the wishes of Trump and his lawyers, who argued that it could damage the Republican nominee during the presidential election cycle.
The brief contained new information about Trump’s alleged activities during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
It detailed his alleged indifference to the fate of Vice President Mike Pence as pro-Trump rioters hunted for him in the Capitol building.
It also said that Trump’s team had tried to garner support for a flawed report into alleged voter machine fraud in Michigan. The then-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee refused to publish the report and told Trump it was “f****** nuts.”
The latest proposed release concerns a substantial appendix to the 165-page evidence brief. That appendix has never been seen by the public and contains further allegations against the former president.
On Thursday, Chutkan granted a request by chief prosecutor Smith to unseal the appendix but stayed that order for a week so that Trump’s team could examine their legal options.
While she granted the stay, her written ruling seems skeptical of Trump’s reasons for wanting to block the release of the appendix.
“As in his previous filing, he identifies no specific substantive objections to particular proposed redactions. Instead, Defendant ‘maintains his objections’ to any ‘further disclosures at this time.'”
The judge wrote that the former president requested this for the same reasons he opposed unsealing the 165-page evidence brief.
Chutkan wrote that “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,” she wrote.
Trump’s lawyers had requested that “no further disclosures” of “so-called evidence” be released because it had been “unlawfully cherry-picked and mischaracterized” by Smith’s office.