The Trump Docket: Secret filing in Jan. 6 case may signal Jack Smith has disclosed sensitive evidence to judge

BRANDI BUCHMAN
Aug 16th, 2024, 2:39 pm

In Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the jurist overseeing Donald Trump‘s Jan. 6 election subversion case, entered a completely classified and redacted one-page order onto the docket, prompting watchers of the recently-revived indictment of the former president and 34-count convicted felon to wonder just what the secrecy is all about.

While impossible to know for certain at this juncture, it seems all too likely that the order’s contents include key pretrial evidence ordered to be kept under wraps in light of guidelines Chutkan set down in August 2023, as Law&Crime previously reported. Significantly, prosecutors have long said that there is only a small amount of classified information underlying the Jan. 6 criminal case against Trump. When special counsel Jack Smith‘s legal team raised concerns last year that Trump’s public commentary on the case may intimidate witnesses or that he would disseminate grand jury materials to do the same, Chutkan set down a nuanced protective order governing discovery and grand jury materials following an Aug. 11, 2023 hearing.

Looking to head off delays and temper expectations, the order instructed that the only materials the parties could designate as “sensitive” or demand redaction for were records containing personal identifying information of the defendant or witnesses, grand jury materials including witness names or testimonies, materials the parties obtained through sealed search warrants, any sealed order obtained by the government’s classified “filter team” related to the case and any recordings, interview reports or other exhibits tied to witness interviews and/or other materials obtained from “other governmental entities,” the judge wrote.

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Law&Crime takes a look at this and other key developments in Trump’s cases in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.

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