Fox News legal analyst Greg Jarrett said that he believes Special Counsel Jack Smith has been caught misleading the judge in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump.
On Friday in a filing to United States District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by former President Trump, that evidence in the case had not been properly maintained after the raid on the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
“Prosecutors have a duty to preserve evidence, Larry, exactly as it is seized,” the legal analyst said to 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.”
“And Smith got caught,” he said. “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.”
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” Smith’s filing 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.”
The prosecutors said they ran out of cover sheets and used blank pages with notations about the level of classification of the document.
“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,” it said. “The investigative team seized any box that was found to contain documents with classification markings or presidential records.”
Jarrett said that the information was crucial to the defense.
“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,” he 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.”
