The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s federal election interference case, in an order late Thursday, denied the former president’s last-minute request to block the release of additional evidence gathered by special counsel Jack Smith.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said that the court will unseal, on Friday, the redacted appendix from the immunity motion filed earlier this month by Smith that included new details about Trump and his allies’ actions leading up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
In ruling that the evidence would be publicly released, Chutkan pushed back on Trump’s argument that the release was politically motivated to influence the 2024 presidential election.
“There is undoubtedly a public interest in courts not inserting themselves into elections, or appearing to do so. But litigation’s incidental effects on politics are not the same as a court’s intentional interference with them,” Chutkan wrote in her order.
“As a result, it is in fact Defendant’s requested relief that risks undermining that public interest: If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute — or appear to be — election interference.”
Chutkan faulted Trump’s lawyers for peddling what she called political arguments rather than engaging with the relevant factors to justify sealing the evidence in the case.