Special Counsel Jack Smith's previous indictment of former president Trump took a serious blow when the Supreme Court ruled he had immunity from prosecution for all official acts. But today Smith and a new grand jury produced a superseding indictment which has been revised to get around that problem.

The revised indictment, issued in Federal District Court in Washington, represented an attempt by prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to preserve the bulk of their case against the former president while bringing the allegations into line with the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for many official acts taken while in office.

It kept the basic structure of the first indictment, issued nearly 13 months ago, which accused Mr. Trump of intersecting plots to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The thrust of the changes was to remove any discussion from the indictment of any allegations that might be construed as related to Mr. Trump’s official acts as president while also contending that others acts should be interpreted as the conduct of a private candidate for office.

The tone of the new charges was apparent from the first paragraph of Mr. Smith’s filing, which described Mr. Trump as “a candidate for president of the United States in 2020.” The original indictment had referred to him as “the 45th President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020.”

Apart from the changes in tone, the underlying charges remain the same. But Smith did drop most mentions of Trump's talks with the DOJ.

The new document is a little more concise and changes some language, but it keeps the same four felony charges and most of the same evidence. After taking a few weeks to review the Supreme Court ruling, Smith has apparently concluded it doesn’t change much about his case at all.

In addition to some slight rephrasings here and there, Smith makes two notable changes. First, he takes out all references to Trump’s attempt to involve the Justice Department in his subversion...

But the Supreme Court ruled that “because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.” The superseding indictment thus takes out references to Trump’s conversations with these officials.

Naturally, Trump blasted the new indictment and Smith along with it.

According to a source familiar, the Trump defense team expected a rewriting of the indictment like this to set up the next phase of the case after the high court’s ruling. A hearing on the case was already scheduled in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s courtroom for next Thursday. But the superseding indictment coming so soon was a surprise.

On Truth Social, Trump blasted Smith and the case against him: “In an effort to resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt in Washington, D.C., in an act of desperation, and in order to save face, the illegally appointed ‘Special Counsel’ Deranged Jack Smith, has brought a ridiculous new Indictment against me, which has all the problems of the old Indictment, and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY.”

Clearly, Smith's plan all along was to have this before the voters during the election. He has obviously been working quickly to get it back on the agenda, but as mentioned there was already a meeting with the judge scheduled for next Thursday. At that meeting both sides are supposed to present their takes on how the Supreme Court ruling impacts the case.

I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about this over the next week. Now that the Democratic Convention is over the media will need something to talk about besides Kamala Harris joy vibes.