Trump’s Lawyers Scramble to Stop Jack Smith Releasing More Evidence

Hundreds of pages of evidence in Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case are set to be unsealed Friday, and it has the former president shaking in his boots.

Judge Tanya Chutkan denied Trump’s request Thursday to delay the unsealing until after the presidential election, and said that the court documents containing evidence submitted by the government would be docketed publicly the next day.

Trump’s legal team had argued that “the asymmetric release of charged allegations and related documents during early voting creates a concerning appearance of election interference,” and pushed for the unsealing to be postponed.

But Chutkan didn’t seem particularly swayed by that argument.

“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,” Chutkan wrote in her filing Thursday.

NBC’s legal analyst Lisa Rubin remarked on Morning Joe that Trump’s team seemed particularly desperate in their scrambled efforts to prevent the release of the evidence.

“They got their ruling last Thursday, they asked for more time to evaluate their litigation options. Then they waited until the eleventh hour instead of getting a ruling from the appeals court, which they didn’t have the ability to do,” Rubin said.

“Why are they fighting so hard if what we’re about to see isn’t really all that surprising? There’s probably something in there that they don’t want the voting public to know about or see in a more fulsome way,” she added.

By Friday morning, Chutkan ordered that the clerk of courts file special counsel Jack Smith’s Redacted Appendix (of exhibits to his immunity determination motion) of Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, and Volume IV.

SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk has taken to campaigning solo for Donald Trump, but his campaign stops might be doing more harm than good for the Republican presidential nominee.

While speaking to a crowd in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the Tesla CEO stumbled and fumbled his way through interactions with everyday Pennsylvanians, failing to convince attendees that they should vote early. Some people were especially unimpressed by the effort, shouting out: “Why?”

In one particularly cringe-worthy interaction, Musk sided with a hardcore 2020 election denier, blaming the media and the Department of Justice for the man’s alleged legal troubles. But the tech mogul would only get so close to the narrative: when offered a book on election denialism and voting machine conspiracies, Musk couldn’t keep up the shtick.

“We have hundreds of people, right now, ready. They’re out taking videos, they’re training poll workers. And we are not getting support from many people in the first front rows here. And their pictures, if we want to know who they are, are in this book,” the man said.

Musk’s response? Use his companies.

“What I recommend is post content on the X platform, and then people can—they can—they can argue and say it’s right or wrong, but if you have videos or evidence then post them publicly on social media and people can, you know, judge themselves, exactly,” Musk said.

“Let’s not get contentious. Team work makes the dream work here,” he continued, to gentle cheers. “I don’t want to dissuade anyone from voting. It’s very important to vote. So any actions with respect to voting machines, we certainly want to put them under intense scrutiny, but nonetheless, everyone needs to vote.”

Getting more Americans to turn out en masse for the former president has been high on the top of Musk’s agenda since he endorsed him in July, moments after Trump survived an assassination attempt near Butler, Pennsylvania. Earlier on Thursday, Musk offered hard cash to his more than 200 million followers on X if they signed a petition in support of the First and Second Amendments.

“If you’re a registered Pennsylvania voter, you & whoever referred you will now get $100 for signing our petition in support of free speech & right to bear arms. Earn money for supporting something you already believe in! Offer valid until midnight on Monday,” Musk wrote.

At his first solo event for the Donald Trump campaign, Elon Musk happily espoused election fraud conspiracy theories, at a town hall in Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, on stage outside of Philadelphia, Musk raised the issue of Dominion Voting Systems and election integrity, casting doubt on the election machines and suggesting they might be involved in fraud—a lie that has been widely debunked. Last year, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion a nearly $800 million settlement for making similar statements to Musk.

“The last thing I would do is trust a computer program,” said Musk, without a hint of irony.

“Statistically there are some very strange things that happen that are statistically incredibly unlikely. There’s always this question of, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that, I think, they were used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County [in Arizona] but not in a lot of other places,” said Musk. “Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence?”

A spokesman from Dominion immediately debunked Musk’s claims in an email response. “Fact: Dominion does not serve Philadelphia County. Fact: Dominion’s voting systems are already based on voter verified paper ballots. Fact: Hand counts and audits of such paper ballots have repeatedly proven that Dominion machines produce accurate results. These are not matters of opinion. They are verifiable facts.”

Throughout his talk, Musk continued to call into question the legitimacy of the 2020 election without any proof. “When you have mail-in ballots and no proof of citizenship, it’s almost impossible to prove cheating,” opined Musk, who has stoked fears about noncitizen voting in the past.

Both in person and online, Musk is happy to point fingers at anything that moves. On Thursday, Musk also criticized canvassing efforts in swing states by U.K. organizers, saying simply “this is illegal.” It is not illegal.

Musk is set to appear at least three more times in Pennsylvania and suggested he “will probably do half a dozen throughout the state,” giving him plenty of opportunities to spread more lies by Election Day.

Donald Trump won’t stop backing out of interviews, and his forces have been left scrambling.

Trump dropped out of yet another interview on Friday, when a Trump adviser told producers of The Shade Room that Trump wouldn’t be following through on talks to appear on the podcast because he was “exhausted and refusing [some] interviews but that could change,” two people familiar with the conversation told Politico.

Kamala Harris recently appeared on The Shade Room, a culture podcast with a predominantly young, Black audience. Ahead of Trump’s cancellation, Shade Room staff felt that the campaign was dragging its feet when it came to nailing down the details, according to Politico.

But Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt pushed back at the reporting, saying the suggestion that Trump was “exhausted” was “unequivocally false.”

This seems to be becoming a trend for the former president, who has canceled three different events in the last 36 hours. Trump canceled his speech to an NRA convention next Tuesday in Savannah, Georgia; backed out of an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box that had been scheduled for Friday; and reportedly “postponed” an interview with NBC’s Christine Romans.

Trump’s not canceling all of his scheduled appearances, though: He still found the time to sit on the couch with Fox & Friends Friday morning.

While canceling plans can be incredibly relieving, Trump’s team isn’t feeling too good. MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire spoke on Morning Joe about how anxious the Trump campaign is as a result of his shrinking media schedule.

“A few weeks ago, Democrats, you heard it, I heard it, we reported it, were nervous about Harris—she’s not doing enough, she’s not out there, she’s not campaigning. It’s all changed: the media blitz, now she’s barnstorming across the country. Now, Trump is the one who has really pulled back, canceling interviews left and right. And there seems to be a new sense of unease coming from the inner circle,” Lemire said.

Former President Donald Trump broke decorum Thursday, morphing a historically lighthearted, bipartisan charity event in New York City into a bitter, profanity-laden rant against his political opponents.

The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a Catholic fundraising event, is traditionally a well-regarded opportunity for both presidential candidates to poke fun at one another before the high tensions of the season culminate in Election Day. But Trump didn’t bring the jokes—instead, he spent his time on the dais hurling a string of insults at Vice President Kamala Harris, who opted to skip the event to campaign in the battleground state of Wisconsin. (Wisconsin was projected this week to have flipped slightly in favor of Trump.)

“The two candidates for president are supposed to exchange good-natured barbs. And you know, we get along very well. I didn’t like Biden very much, and now I like him quite a bit,” Trump said, practically repeating lines from his rallies. “And now I say that she’s much worse than him. He was a much better candidate than her, actually.

“And when we hopefully win, dispose of her, I’ll like her a lot. But right now I can’t stand her. I’ve never liked people I was competing against, and when you do, a lot of bad things happen,” Trump said to a suddenly mum crowd.

Trump also appeared resentful that Harris had chosen to sit out the event, despite the fact that he himself was the first candidate in the race to break election tradition by refusing to sit for a 60 Minutes interview last month, when he reportedly backed out, last-minute, over fears that the rigorous show would fact-check him. (Trump has since backed out of several major interviews, spawning concerns that the MAGA leader is starting a media blackout with just days until voters have to decide who will lead the country.)

“If you really wanted Vice President Harris to accept your invitation, I guess you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis and she would have been here, guaranteed,” said Trump.

“Catholics, you gotta vote for me. Just remember. You better remember that I’m here and she’s not,” he said. “I could have done that too.”

“I don’t give a shit if this is comedy or not,” Trump told the crowd of priests.