Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has filed a motion to dismiss the case regarding classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The motion argues that the prosecution team mishandled and destroyed evidence, compromising Trump’s defense. This development comes after special counsel Jack Smith’s team released new photographs from the August 2022 raid.
Trump’s attorneys claim that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the prosecution team did not properly maintain the evidence. According to the motion, the prosecution team was more focused on staging and leaking manipulated photographs to the media rather than preserving crucial exculpatory evidence. “The prosecution team destroyed exculpatory evidence supporting one of the most basic defenses available to President Trump in response to the politically motivated charges in this case,” the motion read.
The Department of Justice initially released a photograph showing disorderly piles of papers with classification markings. However, it was later revealed that the color-coded cover sheets in the photograph were brought in by the investigative team and used as placeholders for the alleged classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago. In a May court filing, Smith’s team admitted to using these placeholder sheets and acknowledged that the order of the items inside the boxes had changed since the documents were seized.
Prosecutors also admitted that what was previously reported to the judge was inaccurate. “The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the filing stated.
Smith responded to Trump’s motion to dismiss, arguing that the failure to maintain the order of the documents does not support the former president’s spoliation claim. Smith reiterated that the FBI’s Evidence Response Team brought in the cover sheets and photographed the documents next to the box in which they were located.
The court filing also mentioned that the closed-circuit television servers were turned off at the FBI’s request to ensure agent safety. The prosecution released new photographs claiming that Trump recklessly stored the alleged classified documents. “Against this backdrop of the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to maintain his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense,” Smith’s team argued.
Smith maintained that the FBI agents conducted the search professionally, thoroughly, and carefully under challenging circumstances, given the cluttered state of the boxes and the substantial volume of highly classified documents Trump had retained.
