Jack Smith Could Be Donald Trump’s October Surprise

Prosecutor Jack Smith could decide the presidential election for Democrat Kamala Harris when he releases his dossier of evidence against Republican nominee Donald Trump, a law professor has said.

Harry Litman, an attorney and constitutional lecturer at the University of California Los Angeles, was reacting to the pending release of the evidence in Trump’s election-fraud case in Washington, D.C. “It is an extremely powerful body of evidence that could harm Trump’s prospects if it comes out before the election. Talk about an October surprise,” Litman wrote in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.

Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights in connection with an alleged pressure campaign on state officials to reverse the 2020 election results.

Trump has denied all charges against him and repeatedly said he is the victim of a political witch hunt. He has accused Smith of attempting to interfere in the 2024 presidential election by prosecuting him. Newsweek emailed the Trump campaign team for comment on Tuesday.

The dictionary service, Oxford Languages, defines an October surprise as “an unexpected political event or revelation in the month before a [U.S.] presidential election, especially one that seems intended to influence the outcome.”

On Friday, trial judge Tanya Chutkan set Trump’s legal team a deadline for arguments against special counsel Smith’s plans to release the evidence publicly in the Republican’s federal election subversion case.

The Republican’s legal team now has until October 1 to respond to Smith’s motion and a deadline of October 10 to respond to the motion’s appendix.

In September, Chutkan allowed Smith to file the 180-page evidence brief, over the objections of Trump’s lawyer, who argued that the limit in Washington, D.C., federal court is just 45 pages.

In a written brief, Trump’s lawyer pleaded with Chutkan not to release the evidence against the former president “at this very sensitive time in our nation’s history.”

In rejecting their objections, Chutkan complained of the “incoherence” of the Trump position.

Litman wrote that Trump is waging one last battle to bottle up the details of the case.

“Through a combination of luck, lawyering and, above all, the mercies of the U.S. Supreme Court, Donald Trump has managed to keep voters from learning about the mountain of evidence that special counsel Jack Smith has assembled to support criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden,” Litman wrote.

“Chutkan last week granted the government’s motion to file an ‘oversize’ brief extending to 180 pages, or four times longer than the usual maximum of 45. The government contended that it needed the space to provide the trial court with a detailed analysis of why the charges in the case are not precluded by immunity,” Litman added.

Smith’s evidence file is currently under seal until Chutkan decides which lines to censor, or redact, so that witnesses are not identified.

Litman wrote that, if Chutkan grants Smith his request for only very light redaction, “that would mean opening up a trove of inculpatory information about Trump, beginning with all the ‘content of statements made by others,’ including summaries of grand jury transcripts, interview reports and material obtained through sealed search warrants.”

Litman added that Trump “will stop at nothing to try to keep it bottled up. He has until Tuesday to respond to the government’s motion arguing that most of the brief should be public (and until Oct. 10 file a motion on the longer appendix, which the government allows should be mostly redacted).

“Trump’s real goal will be to keep the judge from unsealing the brief while he appeals the matter to the D.C. Circuit Court and potentially the Supreme Court,” Litman wrote.

“The pivotal question won’t be whether Trump ultimately prevails in his contentions but rather whether he can manipulate the legal process enough to run out the clock, keeping Smith’s damaging evidence from emerging before election day.

“If Trump can manage to delay the operation of law one more time, it will be a victory for him and a loss for the voters,” he added.