Trump tried to block Jack Smith’s immunity brief. It backfired.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is about to wade into uncharted legal waters, deciding which of Donald Trump’s alleged election subversion crimes are official acts of an American president and hence at least presumptively immune from prosecution. The Supreme Court directed Chutkan to undertake this unprecedented litigation by creating out of whole cloth a doctrine of criminal immunity for a president’s “official acts.” On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers made a last-ditch attempt to prevent this maiden legal voyage from setting sail. On Wednesday, that attempt backfired, as a brief from special counsel Jack Smith's team with new evidence was made public.

To comply with the Supreme Court’s command, Chutkan needs to see all the evidence of Trump’s conduct on and around Jan. 6, 2021. Last week, Smith filed the lengthy motion, which laid out Trump’s conduct as the basis of the four charges in his criminal indictment. There is also an even lengthier appendix providing the evidence (e.g., grand jury transcripts, FBI write-ups of witness interviews and the like) supporting the narrative laid out in the motion.