(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge released a much-anticipated collection of the government’s evidence in the 2020 election obstruction case against Donald Trump, but the heavily redacted files keep a significant amount of information under seal.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan made the files — totaling 1,889 pages — public on Friday over objections from Trump and his attorneys, who failed to delay the release until after the Nov. 5 presidential election.
Many of the documents will remain secret for now based on the government’s determination that they contain “sensitive” information, including grand jury testimony and witness interviews and information investigators gathered through search warrants still under seal.
The files released Friday keep under wraps some of the most anticipated material — such as the transcript of former Vice President Mike Pence’s grand jury testimony. But the documents do offer a comprehensive repackaging of information about what happened before and after the 2020 election only weeks before voters decide if Trump should win another term in the White House.
A 2024 Issue
Trump’s refusal to admit his defeat four years ago has been central to the latest race for the presidency. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has pointed to Trump’s role in the lead-up to the Capitol attack as evidence that he can’t be trusted to safeguard democracy. Trump recently told voters that Jan. 6 — when a mob of his supporters violently clashed with police at the US Capitol — was a “day of love.”
The publicly available materials released on Friday include social media posts, press releases, public speeches and statements, news reports, and transcripts of interviews and documents from a congressional investigation into the 2020 election and the Capitol attack.
It includes documents that became public in the weeks and months after the election was settled showing what was happening behind the scenes, such as a now-famous memo written by Trump ally John Eastman suggesting how Pence could intervene to refuse to certify Joe Biden’s victory when presiding over the electoral count in Congress. Pence refused to do so.
There are also copies of internal memos about tapping pro-Trump electors to sign copies of certificates falsely declaring him the winner in battleground states that he had lost, a transcript of the January 2021 call where Trump pressured Georgia officials to intercede on his behalf and statements that local officials released at the time defending the results.
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office submitted the evidence to Chutkan as part of its effort to keep the case alive after the US Supreme Court ruled over the summer that Trump — and all presidents — are entitled to sweeping immunity from prosecution for official acts.
The justices sent the case back to Chutkan to decide if the case could move forward under the court’s new immunity rubric. In August, prosecutors filed a revised indictment that removed certain allegations that the Supreme Court said were off limits, such as Trump’s interactions with Justice Department officials after the 2020 election.
But they left much of the case intact, including Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence to intervene on his behalf when Congress met to certify the results. The government then filed a 165-page brief outlining its arguments for why the latest version of the case featured largely private conduct by Trump as a candidate for office that shouldn’t fall under presidential immunity.
The brief featured a detailed narrative of events after Election Day leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and information provided by key witnesses, including Pence, who was compelled to testify before the grand jury.
Trump is due to file his response on the immunity issue by Nov. 7. His lawyers had asked Chutkan to postpone releasing the government’s cache of evidence until their exhibits are released on Nov. 14, arguing that the public already had been “poisoned by a one-sided prosecutorial narrative” through the release of the government’s brief.
Chutkan denied that request, writing that Trump’s argument about the court’s role ahead of Election Day was wrong.
“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 wrote.
Read the documents here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
--With assistance from Chris Strohm and Patricia Hurtado.
(Updated with information about numerous sections still under seal.)
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