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The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s election interference case in Washington, DC unsealed nearly 2,000 heavily redacted pages of evidence submitted by the special counsel’s office, with only handfuls of readable pages across four massive filings that trace the history of the former president’s election denialism.
The filings published on Friday included transcripts of Trump’s remarks, social media posts, interviews from the House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack, campaign emails, the so-called “coup memo” outlining the legally dubious attempt to reject the electoral college certification, and excerpts from Mike Pence’s book and his statement refusing to reject election results.
Trump called Judge Tanya Chutkan “the most evil person” and labeled special counsel Jack Smith a “sick puppy” as he lashed out at the criminal case against him during a podcast on Friday.
He called the case “a terrible thing” and “election interference” as the Republican presidential nominee navigates criminal cases in Washington and Georgia for his efforts to subvert his 2020 loss.
Most of the evidence was already public, but the documents are now baked into 1,889 pages of appendices to bolster Smith’s case against the former president, informing the narrative that led to criminal charges of conspiracy and obstruction.
Most of the pages across the four appendices are empty, with the word “SEALED” above them.
Judge Chutkan’s late-night ruling on Thursday ordered the documents to be unsealed the following day, rejecting Trump’s argument that even the release of mostly blank pages would constitute election interference.
The judge said the opposite is true: denying evidence from the public would be its own form of voter manipulation.
Special counsel Jack Smith (AFP via Getty Images)“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,” she wrote.
Both parties have access to the unredacted versions.
The remaining pages that are available to the public largely consist of previously released documents that have been widely reported in the years after Trump’s attempts to reverse his election loss.
The unsealing follows Smith’s publication of a mammoth filing that provided the public with the fullest picture yet of his case, offering up new details about Trump’s alleged scheme and providing the court with a blueprint for evidence that prosecutors intend to show to a jury at trial.
The 165-page document outlines Trump’s “increasingly desperate” and criminal efforts to cling to power while relying on “knowingly false claims of election fraud,” according to prosecutors.
To support those allegations, the special counsel’s office provided the court with more than 1,800 pages across four appendices.
The unredacted pages include Trump’s tweet calling on supporters to Washington, DC, on January 6 — “Be there. It will be wild!” — along with dozens of social media posts baselessly alleging fraud in the 2020 presidential election. There are also more recent Trump statements — including a Truth Social post from March 2024 referring to January 6 defendants as “hostages.”
Evidence also includes several highlighted passages from Pence’s book recalling Trump’s apparent pressure campaign, along with a copy of the former vice president’s statement announcing that he would certify the election results against Trump’s command.
Then-Vice President Mike Pence presided over a joint session of Congress to certify 2020 election results on January 6, 2021. (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)Other already public documents include transcripts from Trump’s press appearances, press briefings, and the special counsel 2020 report on Peter Navarro’s Hatch Act violations.
The filings did include at least one document that had not been made public: a previously redacted transcript of the House select committee’s interview of a former White House valet who was with Trump on January 6.
According to the valet, Trump returned to the White House at around 1:21 p.m. and asked to see footage of his speech to supporters earlier that day.
Based on the transcript, it appeared that the valet was shown time-stamped photos of the interaction. He told the committee that news coverage of his speech was interrupted by footage of the Capitol attack.
“‘Sir, they cut it off because they’re rioting down at the Capitol,’” he said, according to the transcript. “And he was like, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘It’s, like, They’re rioting down there at the Capitol.’ And he was like ‘Oh, really?’ And then he was like ‘All right, let’s go see.’”
He then described getting Trump a Diet Coke while he watched the footage.
A mob of Donald Trump’s supporters break into the Capitol to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021. (REUTERS)The release of documents in the case — which was frozen for months while Trump appealed on “immunity” grounds all the way to the Supreme Court — comes after Smith revived his indictment against the former president to navigate the high court’s ruling, which granted Trump some immunity from criminal prosecution for crimes tied to official duties in office.
A superseding indictment retains the core allegations against the former president, but Smith clarified that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators acted in their “private” roles — not as public servants performing official responsibilities. Trump was acting as a candidate for office, not an office holder, when he committed the crimes at the center of the case, according to Smith.
Trump’s attorneys are expected to file a response to Smith’s argument by November 7 — two days after Election Day.
