(Headline USA) Special counsel Jack Smith, who has filed two indictments against former President Donald Trump, admitted in a federal court hearing this week that his team improperly claimed it had handed over all of its evidence regarding Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified information.
Smith’s first indictment of Trump has to do with the classified documents found in the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home. The indictment alleges Trump conspired with his staff to move boxes of documents and delete some video footage without telling his attorneys, with the result being that Trump did not return all of the classified material to the National Archives and Record Administration as required.
But in a new filing, Smith’s team admitted they did the exact same thing by failing to upload all of the video footage from Trump’s residence to a platform established by the court.
“…the government learned that this footage had not been processed and uploaded to the platform established for the defense to view the subpoenaed footage,” the court filing reads. “The government’s representation at the July 18 hearing that all surveillance footage the government had obtained pre-indictment had been produced was therefore incorrect.”
A little whoopsie from Jack Smith's office.
DOJ admits it did not produce all the Mar-a-Lago camera footage to defense counsel in first batches of discovery==despite making that claim in court last month.
This security video story will get no blaring headlines: pic.twitter.com/rZc9oplXAB
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) August 1, 2023
Trump had previously accused Smith’s team of lying about his alleged mishandling of documents, claiming the Mar-a-Lago security tapes were never deleted.
“These guys should be prosecuted for MISCONDUCT. Also, whatever happened to Crooked Joe’s Documents? Where are the ones he sent and stored in Chinatown? Is Deranged Jack going to Indict him for this and, at the same time, receiving BRIBES FROM CHINA?” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Smith’s improper filing in the classified documents indictment raises question about his latest indictment against Trump, which has to do with the former president’s conduct after the 2020 presidential election. Critics have already accused Smith of stretching the legal statutes to make a case against Trump.
“This indictment strikes me as an amateurish joke, frankly,” Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said. “Jack Smith as special counsel should be indicted for stupidity – it’s that bad.”
