Special counsel files critical brief in Trump's D.C. case, but it remains under seal
CBSN
Washington — Special counsel Jack Smith has filed what is expected to be a key legal brief in the federal case against former President Donald Trump related to the 2020 presidential election, but kept it under wraps as the judge weighs the next steps.
Smith's filing, which prosecutors said would run up to 180 pages, is expected to provide the most comprehensive look at the evidence federal prosecutors have compiled in their case against Trump, which was upended by the Supreme Court's landmark decision on presidential immunity. The filing was submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday. The court set a deadline of 5 p.m. for the filing.
"We have complied with the court's order," the special counsel's office said in a statement.
For nearly two decades, there's been an effort to change the way the U.S. has always elected its presidents by creating a workaround to the Electoral College, the indirect popular election process that's been used in every American presidential election in history. A collection of states is now a little closer than it was four years ago to choosing a president by popular vote, after Maine signed legislation in April to join the effort.
President Biden's administration is planning to soon issue a regulation to cement the sweeping asylum restrictions it enacted at the southern border over the summer, two U.S. officials told CBS News, describing changes that would make it far less likely for the strict rules to be lifted in the near future.
Toward the end of June 2018, condemned inmates at Holman Correctional Facility in southern Alabama received slips of paper that gave them the choice to decide how they would prefer to die. There were two options: lethal injection, the default method, which Alabama had been accused of botching in the prison's execution chamber; and nitrogen hypoxia, an experimental alternative that the state, facing political pressure to carry out death sentences despite a tally of mistakes, had recently authorized.