Which specific allegations in Jack Smith’s indictment the district court found to be non‑immune after the Supreme Court remand?
Executive summary
The district court was sent back to sort which parts of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 superseding indictment survived the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, but public reporting shows Smith narrowed the indictment to strip references to Justice Department interactions and emphasized private‑actor conduct while preserving allegations about pressuring Vice President Mike Pence — yet the sources provided do not report a definitive, itemized list from the district court itself finding which specific allegations were ruled non‑immune on remand [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What the Supreme Court told the lower court to decide and why that matters
The high court’s July immunity opinion created a twofold obligation for the trial court: apply the immunity framework the Supreme Court announced and determine, on remand, which allegations in the indictment involved “official acts” (and thus are presumptively immune) versus unofficial conduct that could be prosecuted — a task the Court explicitly left to the district court [4] [5]. Reporting consistently emphasizes that the Supreme Court treated interactions with the Justice Department as core official acts that were off‑limits and remanded other categorizations to the lower court for fact‑bound application [1] [4] [2].
2. What Jack Smith did immediately after the mandate: narrowing and reframing
To anticipate the remand, Smith refiled a superseding indictment that removed explicit allegations about Trump’s interactions with Justice Department personnel and reformulated or pared other language to stress that co‑defendants were acting in private capacities rather than as government officials — a prosecutorial tactic intended to shrink the scope of potentially immune “official” conduct [1] [6] [3]. Multiple outlets reported that the superseding indictment “keeps the same criminal charges but narrows the allegations” and was presented to a new grand jury to reflect the Court’s holdings [3] [7] [6].
3. What stayed in the charging papers: Pence pressure and private‑actor coordination
Despite the narrowing, the superseding indictment retained the central allegation that Trump sought to pressure then‑Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the electoral count — an interaction the Supreme Court labeled as at least presumptively official in its opinion, and therefore one the district court would have to scrutinize further to determine whether it remained immune or could be used as non‑immune evidence [2] [5]. Smith’s filings and commentaries indicate he framed much of the remaining case as involving Trump acting as a candidate or private actor and emphasized that alleged co‑conspirators were non‑governmental actors at relevant times [4] [6].
4. What the district court actually found on remand — limits of available reporting
The public sources supplied here document the procedural remand, Smith’s strategic reworking of the indictment, and legal commentary on the difficult factual and doctrinal line‑drawing the district judge faces, but they do not contain a public, authoritative list or order from the district court saying “these specific allegations are non‑immune” [1] [4] [5]. Coverage instead focuses on what Smith removed or reframed and on legal analysis of likely disputes the district court must resolve; none of the provided snippets reports a finalized district‑court determination cataloguing which discrete allegations were held non‑immune on remand [3] [7] [6].
5. Competing narratives and implicit agendas in the reporting
Advocates sympathetic to Smith stress that the superseding indictment follows the Court’s instruction and narrows allegations to avoid charging “official” conduct, framing the refiling as compliance rather than evasion [1] [4]. Critics — including some Republican lawmakers quoted in coverage — accuse Smith of changing little and proceeding regardless, an argument that functions politically even if the legal record is more technical [8] [9]. Legal commentators warn the remand is inherently murky because the Supreme Court gave scant guidance about how to distinguish official from unofficial acts in many of the charged episodes [5] [4].
6. Bottom line: what can be said with confidence and what remains unknown
With confidence: Smith removed allegations tied to Justice Department interactions and rewrote the indictment to emphasize private‑actor conduct and to preserve the Pence‑pressure allegations, leaving the district court the task of applying the Supreme Court’s immunity framework [1] [3] [4]. What cannot be affirmed from these sources: a specific, itemized ruling by the district court listing which individual allegations were found non‑immune after the remand — the provided reporting does not include such a decision or transcript [1] [4] [3]. Any definitive answer about the district court’s factual immunities therefore requires direct access to the court’s post‑remand orders or filings not present in the sources reviewed.