Trump Judge Unseals Special Counsel Filing
Wednesday was not a good day for Donald Trump.
Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a 165-page brief on the charges being presented against Trump.
Trump filed a motion to block the brief from being published, but it was denied, and Judge Chutkan immediately turned around and published the report before Trump could appeal.
No Easy Day
If you read CJR regularly, you already know that I thought the January 6 case against Trump was going to be a problem.
Donald Trump argues that his actions are immune from prosecution because he was president.
However, being president does not give you carte blanche to do whatever you want.
As was reaffirmed in the recent Supreme Court decision, the only actions immune from prosecution are official acts of president, meaning that fall under the purview of the job.
There may be some aspect of the charges that fall under this, but overall, most of these charges are going to stick because this was a campaign-political rally for a candidate who lost the election.
Most of Trump’s actions related to the charges were portrayed as an angry candidate trying to save his presidency, not acts of a president.
Now, if Trump had an official investigation to check election integrity, that would be one thing, but that is not how Smith outlined this case.
And yes, I realize just about everyone reading this is steaming mad right now, but this is the hard truth of this particular case.
Trump went ballistic when the filing was made public, which I also predicted would happen.
Chutkan has made it quite clear that she could care less about Trump being a candidate and about the 60-day moratorium on information being released that could impact the election.
Trump posted on Truth Social, "Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris.
"The DOJ pushed out this latest ‘hit job’ today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate."
He added that the DOJ "has become nothing more than an extension of Joe’s, and now Kamala’s, Campaign.
"This is egregious PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, and should not have been released right before the Election.
"The Democrat Party is turning America into a Third World Country that tries to censor, harass, and intimidate their Political Opponents. What they have done to our Justice System is one of the Great, All Time, Tragedies."
I have read the document, and as it is laid out, it is damning for Trump.
For undecided voters who were waiting on this information before making their decision, it will not help Trump win their vote.
The only solace on this for Trump is that he has a month to recover, and I would suggest he put it in the rearview mirror and allow the news cycle to play out to let it pass as quickly as possible.
Kamala Harris and her husband are now dealing their own domestic abuse scandal, so Trump should continue to hammer policy and let his surrogates attack Emhoff on the domestic abuse scandal.
Trump can recover from this, but something tells me that if he was a cat, he just used up the 8th of his nine lives.
