Judge Tanya Chutkan’s release, with redactions, of 1,889 pages of evidence against President Trump assembled by Special Counsel Jack Smith comes 18 days before an election that appears set for a photographic finish.

The documents relate to January 6 and Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. They are contained in the appendix to Mr. Smith’s immunity opus, which weighed in at 165 pages. That report argues that the 45th president “must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.”

Judge Chutkan’s handling of the case has so incensed Trump that, in a podcast appearance with Dan Bongino on Friday, he ventured, “Now, it’s a terrible thing, what’s happening and the judge is, this judge is the most evil person.” He also called Mr. Smith a “sick puppy” and marveled that “it’s not even believable” that the material is emerging at this juncture.

The evidence unsealed on Friday is divided into four appendices. Much of the material is redacted, meaning that it is viewable to Judge Chutkan and the parties to the case but not the public. The documents that are visible are gleaned from, among other sources, the House January 6 Committee, Trump’s speeches and tweets, and legal memoranda relating to the plausibility of proffering alternative slates of presidential electors. His valet reports that he drank a Diet Coke during the riot at the Capitol.    

Judge Chutkan explained her decision to unseal the document in a five-page opinion released on Thursday. That ruling denied Trump’s request to delay the disclosure of the cache until November 14 — after the election. Judge Chutakn dismissed as “too speculative to support an extended stay” Trump’s contention that the release of evidence would poison the jury pool. 

The judge added that “any public debate about the issues in this case has no bearing on the court’s resolution of those issues.” For that proposition she cited a Supreme Court case from 1941 — “Legal trials are not like elections, to be won through the use of the meeting-hall, the radio, and the newspaper.” Trump maintains that the political context is inescapable and legally salient.

Judge Chutkan’s argument that her stewardship of the case is “simply how litigation works” was disputed by the 45th president, who noted that it is unusual for a prosecutor to be assigned the leadoff position when it comes to the filing of motions. Trump argues that “without any semblance of due process … the public has been poisoned by a one-sided prosecutorial narrative.”

Trump homed in on what he called the “asymmetric releases” of his immunity brief — not yet docketed — with Mr. Smith’s, which was released earlier this month. He argued that the schedule exacerbates “the very harms immunity exists to prevent.” Those harms, the Supreme Court wrote in Trump v. United States, relate to the fear that a president “would be chilled from taking the ‘bold and unhesitating action’ required of an independent Executive.”

The 45th president sought to extend that zone of concern to a campaign, insisting that the release of a document he calls a “monstrosity” and a “political hit job” also poses a threat to what Justice Antonin Scalia called “the boldness of the president.” Judge Chutkan determines that “concern with the political consequences of these proceedings does not bear on the pretrial schedule.”

Judge Chutkan addresses Trump’s claim that Mr. Smith’s motions amount to election interference. The former president has claimed that the release of Mr. Smith’s opus is injurious to not only his own due process rights, but also that it violates the Department of Justice’s own policy that “prosecutors may never select the timing of … any action in any matter or case for the purpose of affecting any election.” 

Judge Chutkan declares that “litigation’s incidental effects on politics are not the same as a court’s intentional interference with them,” and reckons that it is Trump’s  “requested relief that risks undermining that public interest: 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.”

The judge promises that she will “continue to keep political considerations out of its decision-making,” but a different decision was made by Judge Juan Merchan, at Manhattan. Judge Merchan, who presided over New York’s hush money prosecution, delayed two rulings — on sentencing and immunity — until after the election. Judge Chutkan, who once declared that “presidents are not kings,” has shown no such deference.