Former President Donald Trump is blasting the Biden-Harris Justice Department for “weaponizing” the legal system in a political “hit job” against him as a federal judge is releasing a lengthy brief accusing Trump of election interference crimes.

On Wednesday, Obama-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a brief filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith in his continuing case against Trump related to the former president’s handling of the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s legal team previously requested that the brief be largely sealed until after the 2024 election in order to avoid “an improper motion for summary judgment in the court of public opinion” ahead of November.

Chutkan, however, argued Wednesday that there is “no support” for the Trump team’s claims. “These accusations, for which Defendant provides no support, continue a pattern of defense filings focusing on political rhetoric rather than addressing the legal issues at hand,” she wrote. “Not only is that focus unresponsive and unhelpful to the court, but it is also unbefitting of experienced defense counsel and undermining of the judicial proceedings in this case.”

Local criminal rule 47(e) of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia stipulates that motions like the one Smith filed must be no more than 45 pages long, but Chutkan allowed the prosecutor to expand his brief to 165 pages. That brief follows a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in July in which the court clarified, in response to the charges brought by Smith, that the president is entitled to “absolute” immunity when exercising his core constitutional powers and “presumed” immunity when acting in an official capacity, but no president is immune from prosecution for his personal acts, even while in office. The case was remanded to Chutkan’s court to determine, as the Supreme Court explicitly noted in its ruling, if there were even enough charges not protected by presidential immunity for Smith to proceed with the case at all.

“We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote at the time. “At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity,” he continued.

Originally, Smith’s charges centered on Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was impacted by widespread voter fraud and the events that followed Trump’s claims. One of the chief indictments against Trump related to his discussions with U.S. Justice Department officials, which the Supreme Court classified as absolutely immune. The court also explained that Trump’s discussions with various other officials, such as then-Vice President Mike Pence, were subject to presumed immunity and it would now be Smith’s responsibility to “rebut the presumption of immunity.” The other charges leveled against Trump, the Supreme Court said, would have to be thoroughly analyzed in the District Court to determine if they qualified as “official acts” or not.

The brief filed by Smith is his attempt to do just that: he and his team argue that all of the charges they originally brought against Trump, barring the few that the Supreme Court classified as immune, were carried out outside of Trump’s official capacity as president and were, thus, unofficial and personal acts. “Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s brief says. It continues, “Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted — a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role.”

Trump’s discussions with Pence regarding certifying the results of the election, as opposed to requiring states to investigate allegations of voter fraud, were not discussions between president and vice president, Smith’s team alleges, but occurred in Trump’s and Pence’s “private capacities as running mates.” Similar arguments are made about nearly every charge brought by Smith against Trump. The first 85 pages of the brief showcase the “evidence” Smith intends to bring against the former president, including conversations allegedly “overheard” by White House staffers between Trump and his family or Trump and Pence, as well as other officials in the executive branch. Smith’s argument hinges on inferring from the “evidence” presented that Trump was acting “as office-seeker, not office-holder,” in demanding that voter fraud allegations be investigated.

In unsealing Smith’s brief, Chutkan only redacted the names of sources, preventing Americans interested in the case from determining the credibility of said sources, despite the judge’s explicit claim that Americans “need to understand” the case being prosecuted against Trump.

In a series of posts to Truth Social, Trump responded angrily to the publication of the brief. He wrote, “The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.”

He added, “Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power.” Referring to another case Smith brought against Trump, which was thrown out of court by a federal judge in Florida, Trump said, “This entire case is a Partisan, Unconstitutional, Witch Hunt, that should be dismissed, entirely, just like the Florida case was dismissed!”

“Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris. The DOJ pushed out this latest ‘hit job’ today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate,” Trump said in a subsequent post late Wednesday. “The DOJ has become nothing more than an extension of Joe’s, and now Kamala’s, Campaign. This is egregious PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, and should not have been released right before the Election,” he added.

“The Democrat Party is turning America into a Third World Country that tries to censor, harass, and intimidate their Political Opponents. What they have done to our Justice System is one of the Great, All Time, Tragedies,” Trump continued. Saying that the Democratic Party “is guilty of the Worst Election Interference in American History,” Trump went on, “They are trying to DESTROY OUR DEMOCRACY, allowing millions of people to enter our Country illegally. They are determined to stop us from winning back the White House, sealing the Border, and MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. BUT THEY WILL FAIL, AND WE WILL SAVE OUR NATION!”

When questioned by press, Trump said of Smith and the new brief, “He’s a deranged person, I call him Deranged Jack Smith. He just lost the big documents case, that was the biggest of them all.” Trump continued, “He works for Kamala and he works for Joe. This was a weaponization of government and that’s why it was released 30 days before the election. There’s nothing new in there, by the way; nothing new. They rigged the election, I didn’t rig the election.” Trump added, “They should have never allowed the information to come before the public, but they did that because they want to hurt you with the election. It’s pure election interference to get an incompetent person like Kamala — she’s grossly incompetent, she’s more incompetent than Biden.”

In an interview Wednesday night, Alina Habba, Trump’s senior legal adviser, said that the Trump campaign is “going to be hit with an onslaught of litigation. That’s what they do, and we have to understand one thing: this is called desperation.” Saying that the unsealed brief is a “distraction” from Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate, trouncing Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), in Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Habba concluded, “Pay attention, America. Save our country. We’ve got 30-something days. Get out and vote.”

Hours before the brief — which discusses the events of January 6, 2021, at length — was unsealed, Harris wrote on social media, “On January 6, the former president incited an attack on our nation’s democracy because he didn’t like the outcome of the election. If you stand for country, democracy, and the rule of law — our campaign has a place for you.”

Although Smith’s brief asks Chutkan to “determine that [Trump] must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen,” legal scholars have predicted for months, following the Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity, that no trial will take place prior to the election. “The practical effect of this is that the district court is going to do what it really should have done at the beginning, what the government really should have had it do, which is do the analysis so the facts are going up to the Supreme Court,” Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr said in July. He concluded, “So as a practical matter, there’s not going to be a trial of this case before the election.”