A major development has occurred in special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, and it doesn’t bode well for the prosecution.
A legal analyst suggests that Smith has been caught fabricating details of his case against Trump. If proven true, this would cast doubt on his ability to secure a conviction in the case.
According to Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, the Biden Justice Department special counsel “misled” Florida U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon regarding efforts to preserve evidence related to the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022. Smith acknowledged in a filing on Friday that some of the evidence cataloged in boxes seized from the property does not align with itemizations provided to Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta. However, Smith downplayed concerns raised by the former Trump aide, asserting that the information he received was “entirely accurate.”
But it’s “no small matter” for Smith to concede that the government may not have kept evidence in the state in which it was seized, Jarrett said. “Prosecutors have a duty to preserve evidence, Larry, exactly as it is seized,” Jarrett told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, the Daily Caller reported. “Jack Smith’s special counsel admits now in court documents altering, manipulating evidence against Trump. The digital scan of documents doesn’t match the physical order in the boxes that were seized.”
“And Smith got caught,” Jarrett continued. “His excuse, ‘Well, your honor it is a complicated case, lots of documents,’ that is not an excuse. This is evidence tampering. It is destroying exculpatory evidence and even worse, Smith lied to the court and he was forced to admit it although he did so in a footnote, ‘Gee, I misled the judge.’ This is no small matter, Larry.”
In his filing, Smith speculates why evidence may have been moved around in boxes since the raid.
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the filing from Smith’s team admitted. “There are several possible explanations, including the above-described instances in which the boxes were accessed, as well as the size and shape of certain items in the boxes possibly leading to movement of items. For example, the boxes contain items smaller than standard paper such as index cards, books, and stationary, which shift easily when the boxes are carried, especially because many of the boxes are not full.”
In a footnote, Smith acknowledged that the disclosure is “inconsistent” with what Judge Cannon was previously informed by his team. Furthermore, the FBI categorized the boxes using blank sheets with notations after agents exhausted their supply of cover sheets.
“The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized,” Smith’s team said in the filing. “The investigative team seized any box that was found to contain documents with classification markings or presidential records.”
Investigative reporter Julie Kelly has previously written about the lack of cover sheets and its implications for the trial, and in an X post, she essentially debunked Smith’s filing.
“The cover sheets do not represent the format in which the records were found–an intentional misrepresentation in the court docket for special master lawsuit and by the media,” she posted to X on Saturday, including pictures of documents in their original state when found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
This is how DOJ in August 2022 described the files in
a filing to Judge Cannon with accompanying photo that went viral to make it appear that this was the original form of the documents seized by FBI.This does not appear to be the truth–at all. It instead appears that the… pic.twitter.com/yGAgYJMZEt
— Julie Kelly ?? (@julie_kelly2) May 4, 2024
Any discrepancies concerning the evidence against Trump will strengthen the defense’s assertion that his staff merely relocated boxes provided by the U.S. General Services Administration in their original condition. Jarrett suggests that any alterations could be perceived as a coordinated effort by Smith, the Justice Department, the U.S. National Archives, and the Biden White House to prosecute Trump.
“The chronology of documents is vital to Trump’s defense. The staff boxed up exactly what they received from the GSA that was sent to Mar-a-Lago,” Jarrett said. “And we also know the National Archives coordinated with Joe Biden’s White House and the Biden DOJ on how to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump. So one can argue that Trump is the victim of a setup.”
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Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.