President Trump is lashing out at Special Counsel Jack Smith for his damning 165-page legal brief to Judge Tanya Chutkan in his election interference prosecution, which includes salacious, previously unreported details about the former president’s alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump’s lawyers have already asked for additional time to respond to Mr. Smith’s treatise, meaning the special counsel may get the last word on Trump’s alleged crimes before the election. 

Taking to his Truth Social platform, Trump argued that Mr. Smith is engaging in “election interference” by dropping his report just weeks before November 5, even though it was Judge Chutkan who set the timeline for the prosecution to submit their argument about private versus official duties and Trump’s claims of immunity. 

“FOR 60 DAYS PRIOR TO AN ELECTION, THE DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE IS SUPPOSED TO DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THAT WOULD TAINT OR INTERFERE WITH A CASE,” the former president wrote. “THEY DISOBEYED THEIR OWN RULE IN FAVOR OF COMPLETE AND TOTAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE.” 

“THE CASE IS A SCAM, JUST LIKE ALL OF THE OTHERS, INCLUDING THE DOCUMENTS CASE, WHICH WAS DISMISSED!” he added. 

Trump, in that Truth Social post, is referring to the typical practice of Justice Department officials not engaging in investigative or prosecutorial actions that could affect election results up to 60 days before voters go to the polls. That practice received much attention in the wake of the 2016 presidential election from Democrats because the then-FBI director, James Comey, announced just before the election that he had reopened his investigation into Secretary Clinton.

The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, released a report in 2018 that described the 60-day rule not as a binding policy, but as an “unwritten practice.”

“No Department policy contains a specific prohibition on overt investigative steps within a particular period before an election,” Mr. Horowitz wrote at the time.

Mr. Smith’s legal brief, titled “Government’s Motion for Immunity Determinations,” makes the case that none of Trump’s actions in the wake of the 2020 election to reverse the outcome were part of his official conduct as a sitting president. The Supreme Court ruled over the summer in Trump v. United States that presidents have immunity from any crimes committed as part of the commander in chief’s “official” duties. 

The special counsel and his team make the case that none of Trump’s actions in late 2020 and early 2021 were part of his official responsibilities as president, given that the executive branch has no role in adjudicating disputes about elections. Trump was acting not as president, Mr. Smith argues, but as a candidate for the office. 

The former president’s favorite legal experts echoed his claims of election interference following the release of Mr. Smith’s lengthy brief. One Fox News legal commentator, Greg Jarrett, said Judge Chutkan acted in a partisan way by handing Democrats a trove of allegations about election interference with just one month to go until election day.

“Releasing this motion, this court filing, it sure looks like blatant election interference,” Mr. Jarrett said Thursday. “Trump’s lawyers urged the judge [to] keep it sealed. It will impact the election. The judge did it anyway with almost no discussion and there is no good reason to make it public. It’s premature. There isn’t even a trial date.”

Another legal commentator who served in the Justice Department under Trump, Jeffrey Clark, says Judge Chutkan’s redactions of individuals’ names in the court filing are useless, giving Democrats a weapon to go after Trump and his allies. Mr. Clark has been indicted in the Georgia racketeering prosecution for his alleged role in trying to overturn the election, along with Trump. 

“The redactions are ridiculous. None of them are designed to shield either privileged information or inadmissible evidence from public view, but instead just to ostensibly conceal identities. But the identities pop out at you, if you’ve been following the constant news story drum beat against Trump,” Mr. Clark writes of the filing. “So what that means is essentially that virtually nothing is redacted. The process is a joke. The redactions are an easily penetrated smokescreen that has nothing to do with protecting witnesses.”

Mr. Smith’s damning report — filled with salacious details about Trump’s actions and the eccentricities of his staff and advisors in their plotting to overturn the results — may very well be the last word on the election interference case before November. 

On Wednesday night, Trump’s legal team asked Judge Chutkan to push back the due date of their response to Mr. Smith’s immunity arguments. Their briefing is currently due to be submitted to the court on October 17, with a subsequent reply by Mr. Smith, due October 29. 

They ask that Judge Chutkan push their initial response date back to November 21 from October 17 — more than two weeks after election day. They also ask that they be allowed to file a similarly lengthy report of up to 180 pages to respond to Mr. Smith.