The release of a new campaign advertisement named “Bombshell” from the Harris-Walz campaign that focuses on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page immunity brief is likely to amplify President Trump’s contention that the January 6 case doubles as “election interference.” 

The 30-second digital ad first is set to run in battleground states beginning on Sunday. That is only 23 days before America decides whether to make the 45th president the 47th one. Trump has called the special counsel’s motion a “monstrosity” and a “false hit job.” 

Now, that document, which argues that Trump “must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen,” has fully entered the campaign. The ad flashes press headlines tied to its release last week and features dilated images of its text. Quotations from Mr. Smith’s prose unspool across the screen. Among them is the allegation that Trump, after he was told that Vice President Pence was in danger, declared, “So what?”

The advertisement splices together images of the riot at the Capitol with ominous music and selections from the special counsel’s filing. The words “we knew it was bad” are followed by “but it was worse than we thought.” Mr. Smith’s accusation that Trump “resorted to crimes to stay in office” is featured, as are images of, in succession, Mr. Pence and Senator Vance, with the caption, “Next time, there won’t be anyone to stop” Trump from reversing the election results. The word “Report,” a reference to Mr. Smith’s motion, is cited as the source for Trump “pressuring officials,” “endangering lives,” “spreading lies,” and “encouraging the mob.” 

The choice to publish the motion was Judge Tanya Chutkan’s, who was persuaded that a book-length document was the best way for her to fulfill the Supreme Court’s mandate that she determine which of the acts alleged by Mr. Smith were official, and therefore presumptively immune. Unofficial ones, according to Trump v. United States, are bereft of immunity. The special counsel contends that Trump’s effort to overturn the election was a “private one” undertaken in his “private capacity as a candidate for office.”

Trump has argued that publicizing this motion so close to the vote amounts to election interference. His lawyers wrote Judge Chutkan that Mr. Smith aimed for his “politically motivated manifesto to be public, contrary to the Justice Manual and longstanding DOJ norms in cases not involving President Trump, in the final weeks of the 2024 Presidential election.” 

Department of Justice regulations ordain that federal prosecutors “may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.” Mr. Smith’s new and slimmed-down indictment was docketed 70 days before November 5, clearing by 10 days another DOJ rule that charges not be handed up 60 days before an election.

Judge Chutkan writes that she “need not address the substance” of Trump’s claims of election interference because “concern with the political consequences of these proceedings does not bear on the pretrial schedule.” Trump notes on Truth Social that he has “been informed by my attorneys, that you’re not even allowed to bring cases literally right before an Election.”

The judge, in oral arguments, has acknowledged that Mr. Smith’s filing, which clocks in at quadruple the maximum length customarily allotted, is “procedurally irregular” because it does not follow a defense motion. She noted that judges “routinely depart” from the customary litigation script. 

One of Trump’s attorneys, John Lauro, responded that the course Judge Chutkan chose is “enormously prejudicial to President Trump. I can’t imagine a more unfair protocol.” He added that the immunity opus is a “device that turns the criminal rules on its head. There are no special rules for the special counsel.”

Mr. Lauro and the rest of Trump’s legal team have invoked the Sixth Amendment to press their case that Judge Chutkan’s decision to release the motion in advance of trial harms not only Trump’s political prospects, but also his constitutional rights. That clause of the parchment mandates in part that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to … an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”

Trump’s reply to Mr. Smith’s motion is likely to argue that its release to the public — and translation into a campaign advertisement — is prejudicial to his interests in both the jury box and the ballot one. Any judgment that Judge Chutkan hands down on admissible evidence can be appealed to the riders of the District of Columbia Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals — and possibly to the Supreme Court. 

While the justices will not be able to seal what Judge Cannon has unsealed, they could again upend Mr. Smith’s case by ruling that it is founded on immunized evidence.