The lawyer representing former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik revealed that special counsel Jack Smith’s office requested documents deemed “absolutely exculpatory” to former President Donald Trump only after indicting him.

According to CBS News, the documents were initially handed over to Smith’s office on July 23, according to emails confirming they had been received:

A source close to Kerik’s legal team said at the time that they believed the records, which include sworn affidavits from people raising concerns about the integrity of the 2020 presidential contest, show there was a genuine effort to investigate claims of voter fraud in the last election.

On Wednesday, August 2, however, a prosecutor from Smith’s office contacted Bernard Kerik’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, and asked for the same documents that he had already provided, which were described as “absolutely exculpatory.”

“They bear directly on the essential element of whether Rudy Giuliani, and therefore Donald Trump, knew that their claims of election fraud were false,” Parlatore told CBS News. “Good-faith reliance upon claims of fraud, even if they later turn out to be false, is very different from pushing fraud claims that you know to be false at the time.”

The Blaze added:

Parlatore’s explanation of the documents touches on a key aspect of Smith’s case and the legal debate surrounding the indictment: Did Trump know his claims about the election were false, or did he truly believe there was widespread fraud that flipped the election outcome? And if he did truly believe that, are his assertions about the election protected by the First Amendment?

Last month, the Daily Beast reported that Parlatore had turned over a trove of documents.

“I have shared all of these documents, appropriately 600MB, mostly pdfs, with the Special Counsel and look forward to sitting down with them in about two weeks to discuss,” Parlatore said in a statement on July 25.

But that meeting still has not occurred, according to The Blaze.