Jack Smith drops 2,000 pages of evidence that Trump tried to keep sealed until after the election

Despite protests from former President Donald Trump’s legal team, special counsel Jack Smith laid out the evidence that might come up at trial in Trump's Jan. 6 case in a heavily redacted roughly 2,000-page filing Friday.

The heavily redacted filing came in four parts totaling nearly 2,000 pages of evidence. The first section includes interviews the House Select Committee conducted to investigate January 6 with Trump aides. The second focuses on posts made by Trump and his surrogates and statements made by conservative activists like Matt Schlapp, claiming that the election was stolen. 

The third section includes court filings from cases filed by the Trump campaign challenging results in Arizona, as well as excerpts from former Vice President Mike Pence’s autobiography “So Help Me God.”

The sections of Pence’s book include accounts of meetings that took place between Trump and his advisors after Trump lost the 2020 election and Trump telling Pence that he planned for Jan. 6 2021 to be a “big day.”

The fourth document describes a “January 6 scenario” in which Pence would hypothetically use his position as vice president and the slates of fake electors submitted to ensure that Trump is declared president. It also includes the communication from Pence announcing that he would not participate in the fake elector scheme on Jan. 6. The fourth document also contains numerous fundraising emails sent from the Trump campaign to supporters after the 2020 election.

While much of the documents were redacted and most of what was released was already publicly available, there were nuggets of new information revealed in the filing, including excerpts from a conversation between the Jan. 6 Committee and the White House valet, which had been released previously, though with heavy redactions.

In the newly unredacted portions of the interview, the valet seems to be reviewing footage or timestamped photos of the discussions he had with Trump on Jan. 6 about what portions of his speech were broadcast on TV. He also describes getting the former president a Diet Coke while he watched coverage of the day’s events.

The purpose of the filing Friday was to present all of the evidence that Smith planned to present at a trial, something the Supreme Court required of him in its ruling on presidential immunity.

According to Ty Cobb, a former White House attorney under Trump, the filing underscores the breadth, depth and level of corroboration in the evidence against Trump.

“I do think this filing highlights how many layers of corroboration and support they have for the evidence in this indictment,” Cobb told Salon. “There are a lot of strange bedfellows corroborating each other and people from the highest levels to the lowest levels.”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Cobb dismissed complaints from many Republicans claiming that the filing amounts to election interference, saying that Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, made the right call in finding that “the real election interference would’ve been if she had not honored the public’s right to know.”

The level of redaction also suggests to Cobb that there is significant evidence that has not been made public in the case, including evidence like that presented to the grand jury before the indictment, which is not normally released. He  said that to an experienced lawyer, “there’s nothing unusual going on here.”

“He didn’t have a single legal argument to prevent the publication of these documents and he was very dismissive of the public’s right to know which is a significant legal consideration,” Cobb said. “There is no bar that would’ve justified not proceeding at this stage in the game.”