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The brief, submitted over the Trump team's objections, is aimed
at defending a revised and stripped-down indictment that
prosecutors filed last month to comply with a Supreme Court
ruling that conferred broad immunity on former presidents.
Prosecutors said earlier this month that they intended to
present a “detailed factual proffer,” including multiple
exhibits and excerpts of grand jury testimony, to U.S. District
Judge Tanya Chutkan in hopes of persuading her that the
remaining allegations in the new indictment should not be
dismissed and should continue to be part of the case.
A spokesman for the Smith team, Peter Carr, confirmed that
prosecutors had met their 5 p.m. deadline for filing a brief.
Though the brief is not currently accessible to the public,
prosecutors have said they intend to file a redacted version
that could be made available later, raising the prospect that
previously unseen allegations from the case could become public
in the final weeks before the November election.
The Trump team has vigorously objected to the filing, calling it
unnecessary and saying it could lead to the airing of
unflattering details in the “sensitive” pre-election time
period.
“The Court does not need 180 pages of ‘great assistance’ from
the Special Counsel’s Office to develop the record necessary to
address President Trump’s Presidential immunity defense,"
Trump's lawyers wrote, calling it “tantamount to a premature and
improper Special Counsel report.”
The brief is the opening salvo in a restructured criminal case
following the Supreme Court's opinion in July that said former
presidents are presumptively immune for official acts they take
in office but are not immune for their private acts.
In their new indictment, Smith's team ditched certain
allegations related to Trump's interactions with the Justice
Department but left the bulk of the case intact, arguing that
the remaining acts — including Trump's hectoring of his vice
president, Mike Pence, to refuse to certify the counting of
electoral votes — do not deserve immunity protections.
Chutkan is now responsible for deciding which acts in the
indictment, including allegations that Trump participated in a
scheme to enlist fake electors in battleground states he lost,
are official acts and therefore immune from prosecution and
which are private acts.
She has acknowledged that her decisions are likely to be subject
to additional appeals to the Supreme Court.
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