(UnitedVoice.com) – While executing a search warrant on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on August 8, 2022, government officials seized “thirty-three boxes… or items of evidence [containing] of a hundred classified records, including information classified at the highest levels.”
On June 8, 2023, a grand jury convened by Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a 38-count indictment against the former president and Waltine Nauta, Trump’s valet and personal assistant, on felony charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, making false statements to investigators, and Espionage Act violations. The following month, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment, raising the number of alleged crimes to 41 and adding Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira as a defendant.
Recent reports indicated that the FBI reportedly manipulated evidence entered into the court record against Trump and the other two defendants.
FBI Reportedly Manipulated Evidence
On May 3, Smith’s team filed a 13-page response to a motion previously filed by Waltine, seeking an extension to the deadline for his lawyers to file certain discovery materials with the court. His pleading asked for information regarding some of the materials seized by the FBI in August 2022.
Prosecutors advised that they scanned those items “for investigative purposes and to facilitate the defendants’ review” of the boxes’ contents. They admitted that when investigators returned those materials to the boxes, they weren’t placed in the original order in which they had been found.
The prosecutors listed several reasons for the documents’ misplacement, such as the “size and shape of certain items in the boxes” and the settling of smaller materials to the bottom of the containers.
The prosecutors buried a noteworthy admission in footnote three on their response’s eighth page. Stunningly, they acknowledged that the placement of those documents in some boxes was “inconsistent” with what the government “previously understood and represented to the Court.”
The footnote, citing page 65 of the transcript from an April 12 hearing, admitted that a prosecutor told the court that the materials in the seized boxes were in the “original” and “intact form” they were when officials seized the documents. The government only cited one example: “placeholders” in boxes in place of classified documents.
Republican Lawmakers Respond
As one might expect, Republican lawmakers quickly responded to the news of the materials’ misplacement. On May 6, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Jeffrey Ragsdale, the general counsel for the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
#NEWS: @Jim_Jordan investigates Jack Smith’s acknowledgment that some of the evidence in President Trump’s classified documents case was altered or manipulated after it was seized by the FBI in its raid on Mar-a-Lago. pic.twitter.com/9Qn6h9D3h5
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) May 7, 2024
Jordan noted Smith’s acknowledgment that “some of the evidence” presented by his team had been “altered or manipulated” after FBI agents seized those materials. He said that admission presented “grave concerns” regarding the Justice Department’s “commitment to impartial justice.”
In light of the serious nature of the situation, Jordan asked Ragsdale to schedule a briefing before the Judiciary Committee by 5:00 p.m. Eastern on May 20. He also asked the general counsel to provide information regarding the steps his office was taking to “investigate the actions of Jack Smith” and additional documentary evidence and copies of certain communications.
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