Special Counsel Jack Smith confessed that federal prosecutors modified evidence in his criminal case accusing former President Donald Trump of mishandling classified documents.
According to a Friday report court filing, prosecutors stated that documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence are no longer organized as they were found, and some are mislabeled and may even be misplaced. The special counsel’s office wrote in the filing that a government “filter team” responsible for handling the boxes after the FBI took them “was not focused on maintaining the sequence of documents within each box.
The filing later mentions that early inventories and scanned records of the seized document boxes were created close in time to the seizure and are the best evidence of the original order. However, some boxes do not match the associated scans, which the Government acknowledges is inconsistent with their previous understanding and representation to the Court.
The filing also suggests that the Department of Justice and FBI may have misplaced and mislabeled some documents. Initially, government employees used blank sheets of paper as substitutes and cover papers for potentially classified documents during the seizure at Mar-a-Lago.
After the document boxes were brought to Washington DC by the FBI, federal employees and contractors began replacing these “handwritten sheets” with proper classified document covers. The filing indicates that the special counsel’s office is unsure whether some of the allegedly classified documents were lost or mislabeled during the raid on Trump's property.
In response, Trump’s defense team filed a motion to dismiss the case due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Smith accused Trump last June of 37 criminal counts related to the former president’s handling of classified documents. In July, Smith added three more counts against Trump as part of a Democratic strategy to retain the presidency by imprisoning their chief political opponent in an unprecedented legal campaign. New evidence shows the Democrat White House collaborated with the DOJ and National Archives and Records Administration in creating the documents case against Trump.
The case involving classified documents is Trump’s biggest legal battle in an election year, as nearly half of the 88 charges against him are related to the records. Federal prosecutors seized 33 boxes of documents during the raid on Trump’s home in August 2022, according Fox News reported. The Department of Justice has spent more than $23 million in taxpayer funds for Smith's investigation into Trump.
In April, Federalist Elections Correspondent Brianna Lyman outlined There have been three important revelations from the classified documents case so far, which include pressure from the deep state to proceed with prosecuting Trump and White House involvement.
Lyman reported that President Biden also kept classified documents after leaving the vice presidency, but he was not charged because prosecutors thought he would appear sympathetic and forgetful during the trial.
It is alleged that the Department of Energy revoked reportedly revoked the former president's security clearance once Trump was indicted.
In February, journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag reported suggested that the FBI raid might have been planned to hide the intelligence state's involvement in the Russia hoax. The article article on Shellenberger's news website, Public, described how intelligence officials worried about a classified 'binder' in Trump's possession that former CIA Director Gina Haspel protected for years.
“Transgressions [the feds might have wanted to cover up] range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian ‘influence activities,'” Public reported.
According to an unnamed source described as 'knowledgeable about the case,' the binder was “Trump’s insurance policy.”
