More documents drop in Trump election subversion case

Hundreds of pages released in federal criminal case against former US president over 2020 election

Republican presidential nominee and former US president Donald Trump faces criminal charges for alleged election subversion. Reuters

More evidence collected by US prosecutors in the federal election subversion case against former US president Donald Trump was made public on Friday.

The hundreds of pages, many of which were blanked out and marked “sealed”, include material referenced in a sweeping court filing by special counsel Jack Smith made public earlier this month that argued that Mr Trump, the Republican presidential candidate in this year's election, is not immune from the remaining allegations in the case.

The unsealed filings also included excerpts from interviews conducted by the official congressional probe into the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.

Witness names were blacked out, but some could be identified by matching them up with other known events. For instance, former attorney general William Barr describes being summoned to the White House after an interview in which he said the election had not been marred by large-scale fraud, and that he was expecting to be fired.

A few days after that interview, Mr Trump announced on social media that Mr Barr had stepped down.

Mr Smith’s court filing contained few details that had not already been made public, but provided a detailed account of Mr Trump’s alleged efforts to hold on to power following his election loss, including descriptions of his conversations with family members and aides.

A compilation of the evidence was submitted as an attachment to Mr Smith’s filing, but its public release was delayed to give the former president time to raise objections.

Much of the evidence, including reports of witness interviews, transcripts of grand jury testimony and records obtained through search warrants, has been redacted in the public release.

Mr Trump’s lawyers argued that none of the material should be released ahead of the November 5 election, suggesting the move would be seen as “election interference”, and successfully delayed its publication by a week.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan said that while there is “undoubtedly a public interest in courts not inserting themselves into elections”, withholding the documents could also be construed as election interference.

“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 said.

“The court will therefore continue to keep political considerations out of its decision-making, rather than incorporating them as Defendant requests.”

Mr Trump's defence team ultimately chose not to appeal Ms Chutkan’s decision to release redacted versions of the documents.

The former president has pleaded not guilty to four criminal charges accusing him of a multipart conspiracy to obstruct the process to collect and certify the results of his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.

The case has been slowed by a US Supreme Court ruling that former presidents have broad immunity for official actions taken while in office. It will not go to trial before the election, when Mr Trump faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Mr Trump has argued the entire case should be thrown out based on the Supreme Court's decision. Should Mr Trump win in November, experts believe he will order the US Department of Justice to drop the case.