Former President Donald Trump urged the Justice Department under Joe Biden to pursue legal measures against special counsel Jack Smith after a recent revelation in a court filing. Prosecutors working for Smith notified U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is handling the case involving classified documents, that certain evidence has been altered from its original state, leading to Trump’s strong disapproval.
“Arrest deranged Jack Smith. He is a criminal,” Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social as one of several posts he made over the weekend after Smith’s prosecutors informed Cannon that there are some boxes where the “order of items within that box is not the same” as they appear in digital scans of materials.
Smith’s office has acknowledged that the statement provided is not consistent with the information previously presented to the court by the government. Initially, they had indicated that the only modifications made were the removal of certain classified documents and the insertion of placeholders in their place.
The submitted document addresses defendant Walt Nauta’s request for additional time to familiarize himself with the contents and organization of the seized documents. It specifically identifies the documents contained in each box and the correct order of these documents within the boxes. Smith’s submission highlights the issue that the current arrangement of the boxes does not align with the earlier scans, which legal experts consider to be problematic.
“Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants’ review of the boxes,” the Justice Department prosecutors wrote.
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the document said.
Prosecutors then actually ADMITTED to misleading the court: The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the document said.
“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,” the filing said.
“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,” prosecutors wrote.
The specifics play a crucial role in the prosecution’s argument against Trump, who is the initial ex-president or senior elected official facing charges related to classified documents. Trump’s defense strategy is anticipated to include the assertion that the documents were organized chronologically, without consideration for classification markings, as highlighted by legal analysts, according to the Western Journal.
“Legal experts told Just the News the revelation could prove to be a serious problem for prosecutors and a violation of court rules to preserve evidence in the state it was seized,” Just the News noted further.
Trump wrote: “It has always been clear that the ‘Documents Case’ is nothing but an Election Interference Scam concocted by Crooked Joe Biden, Deranged Jack Smith, and their Hacks and Thugs,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Now, Deranged Jack has admitted in a filing in front of Judge Cannon to what I have been saying happened since the Illegal RAID on my home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida — That he and his team committed blatant Evidence Tampering by mishandling the very Boxes they used as a pretext to bring this Fake Case.
“These deeply Illegal actions by the Politicized ‘Persecutors’ mandate that this whole Witch Hunt be DROPPED IMMEDIATELY. END THE ‘BOXES HOAXES.’ MAGA2024!”