Jack Smith filing uses Trump appointee to refute ex-president's argument in documents case

David McAfee
June 23, 2024 6:35PM ET




Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former U.S. President Donald Trump on August 1, 2023 in Washington, DC. Trump was indicted on four felony counts for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)




Special Counsel Jack Smith Sunday used Donald Trump's own presidential appointee to undercut the former president's effort to get his criminal Espionage Act case dismissed.

Trump is currently facing allegations in federal court in Florida that he unlawfully stored and refused to return certain classified documents from his time as the president. Earlier in the day, Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing that case, denied Trump advisor Stephen Miller's request to argue against a gag order being considered in that particular case.

After that reporting, Josh Gerstein, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, noted that Smith filed a new brief fighting back against an attempt by Trump to get the case tossed in its entirety. As part of that bid, Trump's legal team is arguing that Smith wasn't legally appointed.

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To back up that point, Trump's team has argued that former Attorney General Bill Barr only appointed U.S. attorneys who had been confirmed by the Senate to serve as special counsel. Because Smith wasn't approved by the Senate, Trump's lawyers argue, he shouldn't have even been allowed to bring the case.

But Smith's new filing blows that argument out of the water by using Barr as an example, according to reporter Adam Klasfeld.

"Jack Smith just contradicted that in a supplemental briefing showing three of Barr's special counsel picks from 1991 and 1992," Klasfeld wrote Sunday.

Gerstein added that Smith's filing includes "additional statutory authority opposing Trump claim of flawed prosecutor appointment" as well as a "list of Bill Barr's appointed special counsels from his first go-round as AG in 1990s."

You can read the full filing here.



https://www.rawstory.com/jack-smith-bill-barr-filing-trump/

 

'Secrets in cardboard boxes': Smith lambasts Trump over messy Mar-a-Lago docs storage

Kathleen Culliton
June 25, 2024 11:08AM ET




Photos: FBI




Special Counsel Jack Smith ridiculed former President Donald Trump's handling of classified information in a new court filing opposing an dismissal motion he calls "profoundly flawed," court records show.

Smith issued Monday a withering response to Trump's motion to dismiss his federal classified documents case on the grounds that prosecutors' admitted misclassification mistake constituted evidence tampering.

The prosecutor's rebuttal? Mar-a-Lago was a mess.

"Against this backdrop of the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to maintain his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense," Smith writes.

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"The FBI agents who conducted the search did so professionally, thoroughly, and carefully under challenging circumstances, particularly given the cluttered state of the boxes and the substantial volume of highly classified documents Trump had retained."

Smith pulls no punches as he describes Trump's transfer of official documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago social club where they were later found stacked in a ballroom, bathroom and shower, among other places.

"Trump personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most highly guarded secrets in cardboard boxes," Smith writes. "At the end of his presidency, he took his cluttered collection of keepsakes to Mar-a-Lago...After they landed in stacks in the storage room, several boxes fell and splayed their contents on the floor."

The prosecutor also notes the boxes were frequently moved around so Trump could "pick through them."

Smith does not mince words when it comes time for him to rebut Trump's claim that he cannot present a defense in federal Judge Aileen Cannon's Florida courtroom because FBI agents who searched his residence did not keep the papers in perfect order.

"Trump does not offer the Court a single case at any level, at any time, from anywhere in the country, in which the disruption of the precise order of documents gathered in the execution of a search warrant provided support for a spoliation claim," he writes.

"Despite this Trump asks this Court not only to be the first to find spoliation on such benign facts, but also to employ the most drastic sanction available—dismissal of the superseding indictment."

Smith also targets Trump's various claims that he's the victim of a political witch hunt, which the prosecutor characterizes as contradictory at best.

"Over many months, Trump has claimed, among other things, that he deliberately declassified the documents, that the FBI planted them, and that he intentionally selected and sent the documents to Mar-a-Lago as his 'personal records,'" Smith writes.

"The Court should see Trump’s newly invented explanations and his motion for what they are—his latest unfounded accusations against law enforcement professionals doing their jobs."



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-mar-a-lago-2668601272/

 

'Looks like an episode of Hoarders': Messy Mar-a-Lago pics spur onslaught of laughter

Kathleen Culliton
June 25, 2024 1:30PM ET




Photos of Mar-a-Lago storage revealed in Florida federal court filings on June 24, 2024. (Courtesy of the Justice department.)




Americans found themselves playing a strange game of Where's Waldo Tuesday after shocking new photos revealed former President Donald Trump stored classified documents in haphazard containers strewn across the floor of his Florida social club.

Special Counsel Jack Smith shared the photos in his rebuttal Tuesday to Trump's dismissal motion, arguing Mar-a-Lago was just too messy for federal agents to preserve the pristine order Trump claims is critical to his case.

The photos swiftly made their way to social media where stunned viewers found stacked among the secret documents at the heart of his Florida federal court case a Hermes box, crates of Diet Coke and a picture of former President Donald Trump with eagle wing horns.

"I would expect my kids to keep better care of their schoolwork," replied X user Shannon Snow, "and this is how the former president took care of national secrets????"

Smith argued Monday the pictures prove prosecutors' admitted misclassification mistake does not constitute evidence tampering, as the former president has suggested, because they were stored among such clutter.

"Trump personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most highly guarded secrets in cardboard boxes," Smith writes.

"At the end of his presidency, he took his cluttered collection of keepsakes to Mar-a-Lago...After they landed in stacks in the storage room, several boxes fell and splayed their contents on the floor."

ALSO READ: ‘They could have killed me’: Spycraft, ballots and a Trumped-up plot gone haywire

That's not all keen-eyed viewers found.

"In a newly released photo from Mar-a-Lago: a box that held classified documents, some Trump campaign hats, a Hermes box and a bunch of Diet Coke," replied Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.

"What," replied Ian Larkin. "No ketchup?"

"Probably not all that important, but which of his staff retrieves diet coke from this location?" X user @SimplySimplye wanted to know.

X user @Keing_unfug found evidence worth reporting to the interior design police, writing, "That carpet alone should get him arrested."

"Trump is a slob," @cincity631 replied. "His 'beautiful' life is diet coke stashed on the floor of some room filled with c---. Looks like an episode of Hoarders after a couple days of effort."

An odd portrait of the former president caught the eye of @DLRotoff, who replied, "How iconic that the documents were stored next to a crate of Diet Coke and a cheesy picture of djt’s face framed in eagle’s wings & an image the American flag."

"Does he really think this is valuable?" X user Liz hair wanted to know of the portrait.

Michael Beschloss found a box of "rumpled clothes."

"Gee," replied X user Steve Miller, "and I thought the boxes of classified documents stacked in one of the bathrooms at MAL was bad."

"You know what these pictures prove definitively?" concluded X user Jen. "Mar-a-Lago is a dump."



https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-mar-a-lago-pictures/