With less than three weeks until Election Day, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed “evidence” Special Counsel Jack Smith submitted to justify his lawfare attempts against former President Donald Trump. It’s certainly not the October Surprise the left was hoping for; the heavily redacted evidence fails to bolster Smith’s dubious claim that Trump should be denied his First Amendment right to question the outcome and administration of an election.

Whether the unsealed “evidence” corroborated Smith’s lawfare matters not. What matters is whether Smith, Chutkan, and the propaganda press can leverage it to undermine Trump’s chances by influencing public perception ahead of Nov. 5 — something that leftists once considered taboo when they thought their candidate was in the crosshairs.

Chutkan ordered the unsealing Thursday night, acknowledging the potential impact that doing so would have on the upcoming election.

“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute — or appear to be — election interference,” Chutkan wrote. “The court will therefore continue to keep political considerations out of its decision-making, rather than incorporating them as Defendant requests.”

The unsealing comes just weeks after Chutkan unsealed Smith’s 165-page brief, which alleges Trump used “false claims of election fraud to disrupt the electoral process” in 2020. Smith argues that Trump’s “refuse[al] to say whether he would accept the election results” of 2020 (which saw unelected leaders usurp the authority of state legislatures and unilaterally change election procedure) and Trump’s expressing concern about potential fraud are grounds for prosecution and jail time.

Chutkan’s unleashing of Smith’s 11th-hour brief and her subsequent unsealing of “evidence” have been brushed aside by the left — even though Chutkan’s mention of “political consequences” is an admission her decision amounts to election interference — because they’re useful fodder.

ABC News pretended that Chutkan’s decision to unseal the “evidence” was her effort to push “back on Trump’s argument that the release was politically motivated to influence the 2024 presidential election.”

“Chutkan faulted Trump’s lawyers for peddling what she called political arguments rather than engaging with the relevant factors to justify sealing the evidence in the case,” ABC News reported.

Meanwhile, Newsweek used the unsealing to write a piece about a “mountain” of “evidence” against Trump — even though The Washington Post, for example, called the unsealing “unrevelatory.”

But such blatantly obvious attempts to sway the public’s perception of one of the candidates constitutes election interference — at least according to the standard used in 2016.

Then-FBI Director James Comey announced in October of 2016 that the agency would be investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails. The announcement set off years of blaming Comey for causing Clinton to lose the race.

NPR published a piece days before Election Day in 2016 highlighting the point that Comey’s decision came “just days before Election Day” and that “former prosecutors and former Department of Justice officials are questioning what Comey hopes to accomplish by announcing the investigation so close to the election.” The article went on to cite several anonymous officials who said the timing of the announcement would impact the election.

The New York Times cited “senior Justice Department officials” who said they “did everything short of” stopping Comey from “sending the letter” and argued that Comey’s letter could be “seen as meddling in elections.”

Vox published a piece in January of 2017 titled “4 pieces of evidence showing FBI Director James Comey cost Clinton the election,” which went on to say Comey’s announcement had an “impact” on the race and “cost Clinton the election.”

Comey let Clinton off the hook and never recommended charging her, and her loss could not be attributed to anything but her poor candidacy and lack of appeal. But Democrats and their propaganda press allies took Comey to task for allegedly interfering in the 2016 election just prior to Election Day.

Of course, they’ve coincidentally lost their appetite for accountability surrounding politically charged lawfare when Trump is in the crosshairs.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2