Legal expert: Chutkan will 'rule quickly' on Jack Smith’s request to unseal Trump dossier

28 September 2024

According to a prominent legal expert, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is unlikely to delay on deciding whether to publicly release a comprehensive dossier Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith recently submitted.

On Friday, Smith formally asked Chutkan — who is overseeing former President Donald Trump's D.C. election interference case — to allow portions of the dossier to be available for public view prior to the November election. And according to Newsweek, former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks thinks Chutkan's decision may come sooner than expected.

"Her history has shown that she acts quickly. So I expect that she will rule quickly enough on this that we could see it," Wine-Banks said on a recent episode of the SistersInLaw podcast.

Smith submitted the 180-page dossier under seal to Chutkan earlier this week, which reportedly gives summaries of what witnesses told Smith's team of investigators regarding the former president's actions in the days leading up the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The special counsel argued to Judge Chutkan that the details of the document are in the public interest, and that he's willing to redact names of witnesses outside of former Vice President Mike Pence.

The D.C. case suffered a setback after the Supreme Court ruled in July's Trump v. United States decision that presidents have absolute broad immunity from criminal prosecution for all "official acts." But the Court left it up to lower court judges (like Chutkan) to decide how to define "official acts" protected by the immunity ruling vs. unofficial acts a president carries out as a private citizen.

Smith entered a new superseding indictment following the immunity decision. Wine-Banks opined that it is likely to survive Trump's attempts to toss it out, and that his new dossier likely includes "a pretty good summary of what the facts are that relate to the superseding indictment and why the things that he still has in the charges are all either completely unofficial acts, personal acts of candidate Trump, or why they are rebuttable official acts."

Chutkan has given Trump's lawyers until Tuesday to submit their response to Smith. Depending on how Chutkan ultimately rules, the dossier could become at least partially unsealed by mid-October, giving voters several weeks to learn more about why Smith decided to indict the 45th president of the United States on multiple felony charges.

The January 6th case is just one of two federal cases against the former president. In the Southern District of Florida, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon threw out Smith's 37-count indictment of Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents after he left office.

Cannon cited Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' argument in his concurring Trump v. United States opinion that Smith's appointment was unconstitutional to justify her dismissal of the case. Smith has appealed her decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has ruled against Cannon twice — with both of those decisions pertaining to Trump-related cases.

Should Trump win a second term in the White House this November, it's likely he'll have his appointed attorney general dismiss both federal cases against him. His last remaining criminal case in Georgia could also be put on hold for four years, as his attorneys have argued the trial should be put on hold until January of 2029 if Trump is victorious this fall.

Click here to read Newsweek's article in full.

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