Former President Donald Trump urged the Justice Department under President Joe Biden to pursue legal measures against special counsel Jack Smith after a shocking revelation in a court filing. Prosecutors working for Smith disclosed to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is handling the case involving classified documents, that certain evidence has been altered from its initial state, sparking anger from Trump. “Arrest deranged Jack Smith. He is a criminal,” Trump wrote.
Smith’s prosecutors notified Cannon that there are discrepancies in the order of items within the boxes retrieved from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022, as compared to the digital scans.
Smith’s team admitted that this information contradicts the government’s previous statements. Initially, they had indicated that the changes made were limited to the removal of classified documents and the insertion of placeholders. The filing also addressed defendant Walt Nauta’s request for more time to review the seized documents. It outlined the contents of each box and the correct sequence of documents within them. Smith’s submission highlighted the issue of the current order of boxes not aligning with the earlier scans, which has raised concerns among legal experts.
“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.
Smith’s prosecutors finally were forced to admit that they did indeed mislead 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.
