Former President Donald Trump recently expressed outrage over an explosive admission made by special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors in a legal filing regarding the classified documents case. In their filing, they informed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that some evidence is no longer in its “original, intact” form. This development has prompted Trump to call for legal action against Smith on Truth Social, where he wrote, “Arrest deranged Jack Smith. He is a criminal.
Smith’s prosecutors acknowledged that their statement about the alterations made was “inconsistent” with what they had previously informed the court. They initially stated that the only changes made were the removal of some classified documents and the insertion of placeholders in their place. The filing addressed defendant Walt Nauta’s request for additional time to learn the contents and organization of the documents seized, specifically identifying which documents were in which boxes and the correct sequence of the documents within those boxes.
The filing noted that the current order of the boxes doesn’t match scans of them made earlier, which is a problem, according to legal experts. The Justice Department prosecutors explained that personnel had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with court orders in the civil proceedings, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants’ review of the boxes.
However, the details are crucial to the prosecution’s case against Trump, who is the first former president or high-ranking elected official to be charged with possessing classified documents. Part of Trump’s defense is expected to be that documents were packed in chronological order, with no regard for classification marking. Legal experts argue that this 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.
Trump took to Truth Social once again to share his thoughts on the matter, stating, “These deeply Illegal actions by the Politicized ‘Persecutors’ mandate that this whole Witch Hunt be DROPPED IMMEDIATELY. END THE ‘BOXES HOAXES.’ MAGA2024!” This incident has raised concerns about the integrity of the evidence and whether it has been tampered with, potentially impacting the outcome of the case.
