What did Vice President Harris know about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s filing in the January 6 case and when did she know it? That’s the question that arises as the Harris campaign cuts its first advertisement, called “Bombshell,” based on Mr. Smith’s immunity brief only five days after it became public. It is set to run in battleground states just 23 days before the election. It bolsters President’s Trump’s claims of “election interference.”

How could it not? As our A.R. Hoffman reports, the advertisement features images of Mr. Smith’s report, headlines announcing the publication of the immunity opus, and quotations from the special counsel’s case that Trump “resorted to crimes to stay in office.” It also fronts the special counsel’s allegation that when the 45th president was informed that Vice President Pence was in danger at the Capitol, he replied, to baleful music, “so what?” 

This translation of Mr. Smith’s 165-page case against Trump into a 30-second advertisement for his political rival is so remarkable because it follows the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States that official presidential acts are presumptively immune from prosecution. Never mind Mr. Smith’s long ago speech about how Trump must be presumed innocent. What does Mr. Smith think the Supreme Court is, chopped liver?

The Supreme Court reversed Judge Tanya Chutkan. It so upended the special counsel’s case that he worked up a new indictment. No wonder Mr. Smith is shifting his focus to the ballot box from the jury box. He produced a document that would bring the case against Trump to the public square. Judge Chutkan acknowledged that her permission for the special counsel to file a brief quadruple the usual length was “procedurally irregular.”

Trump called it a “monstrosity” and a “false hit job.” His lawyers argued that the release of this opus would violate the Department of Justice’s own warning that “Federal prosecutors and agents may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

That language was added as DOJ canon by Attorney General Garland in 2022. He reports to President Biden, who hired Mr. Smith to investigate Trump in respect of both January 6 and Mar-a-Lago. Now it is Mr. Biden’s hand picked successor who is making a ‘bombshell’ out of Smith’s filing against Trump. One of his attorneys, John Lauro, told Judge  Chutkan that this arrangement is “enormously prejudicial to President Trump.” 

Mr. Lauro added that he could not “imagine a more unfair protocol” than the one Judge Chutkan has greenlit. No defense of Trump’s behavior is necessary to suggest that the attorney has a point. One erstwhile federal prosecutor, Elie Honig, reckons that Mr. Smith “has essentially abandoned any pretense; he’ll bend any rule, switch up on any practice — so long as he gets to chip away at Trump’s electoral prospects.”

This point was well made in the Wall Street Journal by Kimberely Strassel, who asserts that the brief is “manna to Democrats, who are desperate for their Jan. 6 lawfare campaign to dominate the final sprint.” She notes that “Trump’s indefensible behavior is already well-known” but that “the damage is done. The brief is out.” Now, voters don’t need to digest the book-length assessment. The half-minute advertisement will do the trick.

The scholar Sean Wilentz celebrates how with this filing Mr. Smith has “outsmarted the Supreme Court,” which hardly appears to be the kind of ‘bombshell’ a by-the-book government lawyer is meant to pursue. Trump has long contended that the “prosecution team” arrayed against him comprises not just Mr. Smith’s office, but much of the Biden-Harris administration. Now, it appears as if the Harris campaign has a closer — if the Supreme Court doesn’t cry foul.