Why the bid to muzzle Trump?

Federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan is ready to hear today a bid by Special Counsel Jack Smith to prevent Donald Trump or his lawyers from disclosing information in documents that the government gave to his team during the discovery process. She denied the former president's request for a delay in order to give his lawyers a chance to mount a detailed response.

The government cites a social media post in which Trump said he goes after people who go after him. It is improbable that this seemingly intemperate campaign rhetoric (which only states what everyone knows about Washington's hardball politics) has much logical relation to the desire to muzzle any discussion of the thousands of pages of files by Trump, his lawyers or his campaign.

But, it should be observed that the "emergency" arose after a New York lawyer asserted that he had turned over to Smith's office a large cache of files that completely exonerate Trump of Smith's claim that Trump knowingly lied about the 2020 presidential election having been rigged. The lawyer said that the files show that Trump and his advisers were convinced that the election had been flagrantly dishonest.

The lawyer conjectured that the special counsel's office had failed to fully review those documents before bringing the indictment, in which Smith interprets federal law to say that Trump committed a criminal offense when, as president, he addressed a large crowd of supporters on the Washington Mall on Jan. 6, 2021.

Having Trump or campaign aides quote from such evidence would humiliate the Justice Department and the Biden White House right in the midst of presidential campaigning, which has already started to get off the ground.

Judge poised to hear bid to muzzle Trump
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/trump-truth-social-smith-evidence-2020/index.html

https://paulconant.substack.com/p/stunning-blunder-by-smith