Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said on Monday that special counsel Jack Smith “misled” a judge about evidence preservation in legal filings related to the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump.
Smith admitted in a Friday filing before United States District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, that evidence had not been properly maintained by federal investigators following the Aug. 8, 2022, raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate owned by the former president. Jarrett said that the admission by the special counsel that evidence had not been preserved in the condition it was seized and that the court had been misled was “no small matter.”
“Prosecutors have a duty to preserve evidence, Larry, exactly as it is seized,” Jarrett told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow. “Jack Smith’s special counsel admits now in court documents altering, manipulating evidence against Trump. The digital scan of documents doesn’t match the physical order in the boxes that were seized.”
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“And Smith got caught,” Jarrett continued. “His excuse, ‘well, your honor it is a complicated case, lots of documents,’ that is not an excuse. This is evidence tampering. It is destroying exculpatory evidence and even worse, Smith lied to the court and he was forced to admit it although he did so in a footnote, ‘gee, I misled the judge.’ This is no small matter, Larry.”
Smith unsealed a superseding indictment on July 27, 2023, that included charges against Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago after the special counsel initially secured a 37-count indictment against Trump and aide Walt Nauta in June 2023.
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the filing from Smith’s team 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. 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.”
Smith’s team also admitted in a footnote that the statement was “inconsistent” with what Cannon had been told in previous arguments. Prosecutors also admitted that the FBI placed cover sheets and blank sheets with notations about the level of classification in the documents after they ran out of cover sheets.
“The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized,” Smith’s team said in the filing. “The investigative team seized any box that was found to contain documents with classification markings or presidential records.”
“The chronology of documents is vital to Trump’s defense. The staff boxed up exactly what they received from the GSA that was sent to Mar-a-Lago,” Jarrett said. “And we also know the National Archives coordinated with Joe Biden’s White House and the Biden DOJ on how to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump. So one can argue that Trump is the victim of a setup.”
Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
