Inside the DOJ’s aggressive effort to get Trump on documents charges
By
Kaelan Deese
May 22, 2024 5:53 pm
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The Justice Department under the Biden administration was more aggressive when pursuing former President Donald Trump in the classified documents case than previously known, according to newly released court filings.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday unsealed hundreds of documents related to Trump’s 40-count federal indictment in Florida over his handling of sensitive records retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago resort home after he left the White House in January 2021. The unsealing comes months after arguments between special counsel Jack Smith and Trump’s defense team.
FILE – The indictment against former President Donald Trump is photographed on Friday, June 9, 2023. A pretrial conference Tuesday, July 18, to discuss procedures for handling classified information will represent the first courtroom arguments in the case before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon since Trump was indicted five weeks ago. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)Smith and the Biden DOJ said they wanted the documents censored in order to keep witnesses from being identified. Cannon even dinged Smith by expressing “concern” the special counsel’s office had sought redactions of information in the newly unsealed filings after previously giving the green light for that information to be published in an earlier court filing.
A Washington Examiner review of hundreds of freshly unsealed federal court records paints a picture of a far more aggressive effort than previously known by both the National Archives Records Administration and the DOJ to crack down on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents despite direct and continued correspondence between Trump lawyers and NARA officials.
For example, Trump lawyers submitted copies of email exchanges with NARA general counsel Gary M. Stern on June 30, 2021, just five months after Trump left the White House.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3013121/inside-dojs-aggressive-effort-trump-documents-charges/
