Trump claims new Jack Smith filing is election interference. Here's how it became public.

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump and his campaign have accused special counsel Jack Smith of violating long-standing Justice Department norms by including new revelations about his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in a filing released Wednesday.

In reality, a federal judge, not Smith, made the decision to release the filing to the public.

Trump on Thursday called it a "weaponization of government" to release the filing just a month before Election Day, alleging that Smith and federal law enforcement officials were improperly influencing a presidential election.

It's true that the Justice Department typically abides by an informal 60-day “quiet period” before an election — meaning it avoids taking discretionary action that could be seen as influencing voters. The new disclosures from the special counsel's office, however, were made in an ongoing criminal case at the order of a federal judge, Tanya Chutkan, who ultimately made the decision to release the redacted filing Wednesday.

Smith wasn’t aware that Chutkan was going to make the decision to release the document nor when, two sources familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly said.

Others have compared the “October surprise” filing to the then-FBI director James Comey’s pronouncements about Hillary Clinton’s emails in October 2016, to Trump’s benefit. But the scenarios are starkly different. In 2016, the director of the FBI made disparaging comments about a presidential candidate who, its investigation found, didn't commit conduct that warranted criminal charges. In 2024, a special counsel who secured three separate indictments from different federal grand juries against a former president disclosed information in an ongoing