Jack Smith forecasts lengthy response to Trump allegations of 'destroyed' Mar-a-Lago 'exculpatory' evidence
Source: Law & Crime
Jun 20th, 2024, 8:50 am
The special counsel said he’s going to need several more pages to unwind claims by Donald Trump’s defense lawyers that “exculpatory” evidence was ruined “forever” by investigators acting in “bad faith” in their August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago.
Jack Smith, noting he is set to respond to Trump’s motion to dismiss by Monday, certified, consistent with the U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s rules, that Trump’s defense lawyers consented to the page limit expansion during an email conferral.
The Wednesday filing from the Special Counsel’s Office explained that Trump’s evidence spoliation motion is 25 pages long in its own right and is packed with allegations of wrongdoing on the part of the prosecution, necessitating more room for Smith to reply. “The Government hereby moves for leave to have an additional seven pages for its opposition in order to be able to fully respond to defendant Trump’s allegations and arguments,” the brief unopposed request said.
On June 11, the day Cannon almost entirely rejected defense arguments that the Espionage Act indictment had deficiencies requiring dismissal, Trump lawyers separately filed a new motion to dismiss, one claiming that the feds destroyed “important exculpatory evidence relating to the locations of the allegedly classified documents at issue” just to leak photos of classified documents scattered across the floor.
Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/jack-smith-forecasts-lengthy-response-to-trump-allegations-of-destroyed-mar-a-lago-exculpatory-evidence/
Link to Smith MOTION (PDF) - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.627.0.pdf
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As I understand it, he was never given original documents when he was in the White House. Chump was only ever given copies and ... I don't know ... maybe he was too stupid to realize they weren't original documents? The originals have always been held by the U.S. government.
The irony here is that the Feds could have lit a match and burned those boxes, and they still would have retained the original documents safely in storage. But their job was to get them OUT OF CHUMP's HANDS, and that's exactly what they did.
There's a daily folder the White House staff makes up called the President's Daily Briefing. It's been standard procedure since JFK was president, or maybe earlier. The PDB book reviews everything that the president needs to know that's happened in the last 24 hours, and it includes top secret stuff as well as non-secret info.
When Chump was president he refused to listen to their presentations and he never looked at the books they made up for him. Sound familiar?
The books got tossed in a closet, unopened, and that's probably how he got the idea that it was his "property." That's what he took when he left, along with folders that were stamped "top secret " documents. Anything that was given to Chump was a photocopy, they never gave him original documents.
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