Appendix of source materials unsealed in Trump Jan. 6 prosecution
Special counsel Jack Smith's appendix of source materials was unsealed by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Friday. (Photo by Tom Brenner for the Washington Post)
U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Friday unsealed a heavily redacted—and unrevelatory—version of the appendix of source materials underpinning special counsel Jack Smith’s massive legal filing that detailed the evidence collected against Donald Trump in the federal D.C. election interference case.
Chutkan unsealed the initial 165-page filing, which was meant to convince the judge Trump could still be prosecuted even after the Supreme Court ruled this summer he enjoyed broad immunity, earlier this month.
Even though Trump lawyers have since been sparring with prosecutors in court filings over whether the appendix should be unsealed, the redacted filing contained little new information in the case against Trump.
While appendixes to legal filings can contain revealing information about a case—such as witness interview transcripts—nearly all of the documents released Friday had been public for years.
The appendix was released in four portions. The first portion was 723 pages and was almost entirely redacted, with the exception of a few House Committee interviews from its investigations into efforts to overturn the election results. Unredacted information from the other portions included excerpts from Vice President Mike Pence’s autobiography, a transcript of a Trump White House news briefing after the election in November 2020 and a transcript of a 2023 CNN town hall interview with the former president.
That’s a sharp contrast from the initial Smith filing, which contained damaging new details in the case against Trump.
Chutkan decided last week that she would unseal the appendix but paused her ruling from going into effect for seven days, giving Trump’s team time to appeal her ruling.
Trump’s team asked Chutkan on Thursday to delay making the appendix public until after the election, arguing that releasing it now could appear as though the court was trying to make a political impact, but Chutkan denied their request hours later.
Federal prosecutors first indicted Trump in the D.C. federal election interference case in August 2023, charging him with four counts centered on what they alleged was a conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct the finalizing of Joe Biden’s victory. The case was frozen for months after Trump argued that presidential immunity should protect him entirely from prosecution, and the Supreme Court decided to take up that unprecedented legal question long before any trial.
The Supreme Court issued its decision in July, and the following month, Smith filed a superseding indictment with the same four charges but whittled down evidence against Trump that prosecutors said comported with the new parameters set by the justices on presidential immunity.
In the filing unsealed earlier this month, Smith explained in great detail why the allegations laid out against Trump in the superseding indictment should be considered unofficial acts by a president that can be prosecuted under the Supreme Court’s broader definition of presidential immunity.
Among the more striking allegations revealed in the filing: Trump reportedly said “So what?” when an aide told him that Pence had been taken to a secure location as violence unfolded at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump’s team has argued that Smith’s filing amounted to election interference because it was made public so close to the November presidential election. Trump accused the Justice Department of violating its long-standing practice of not taking public steps in politically related cases close to an election.
Trump and his lawyers made similar arguments against releasing the appendix.
“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’s lawyers wrote in a filing to Chutkan last week.
