Trump Whodunnit: Prosecutors admit key evidence in document case has been tampered with
Legal experts call revelation a “serious violation” as Jack Smith’s team admits it also misled court.
Just the News, May 3, 2024, John Solomon

In a stunning admission, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team is admitting that key evidence in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents criminal case was altered or manipulated since it was seized by the FBI, and that prosecutors misled the court about it for a period of time.

Legal experts told Just the News the revelation could prove to be a serious problem for prosecutors and a violation of court rules to preserve evidence in the state it was seized.

In a new filing Friday, Smith’s team said that the order of documents in some of the boxes of memos that were seized by the FBI from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was altered or jumbled, leaving two different chronologies: one that was digitally scanned and another the physical order in the boxes.

“Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants' review of the boxes,” Smith’s team wrote in a new court filing to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.

“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the prosecutors wrote.

Smith’s team in a footnote also conceded it had misled the court about the problem by previously declaring that the evidence had remained in the exact state it had been seized.

"The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the footnote said.

The organization of the documents in storage boxes at Mar-a-Lago is likely to be an important part of Trump‘s defense. His team is expected to argue the documents were stored in the White House in chronological order on the days that Trump received them, and that staff simply boxed them up and sent them to his home without him accessing them or knowing they contained classified information.

Smith’s team tried to downplay the problem and argued it’s not a reason for a delay in Trump’s case.

But several legal experts told Just the News the court filing essentially is an admission of evidence tampering, and could be problematic. 

Prominent defense attorney Tim Parlatore, who worked on Trump’s team earlier in the classified documents case but no longer is involved, said ”this admission is stunning on multiple levels.”

He said the revelation “reinforces the incompetence” of prosecutors “in conducting basic criminal investigations and prosecutions that I observed when I was on the team.

“But at a deeper level, the loss of specific document locations is a destruction of exculpatory evidence,” he added. “I went through all of the boxes at NARA and the document order was important because it was clear to us that the boxes had been untouched since leaving the White House.

“For prosecutors who are trying to prove that the defendants knowingly possessed these documents to then destroy the evidence that would undermine that claim is a very serious violation,” he added.


More:  https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/trump-whodunnit-prosecutors-admit-key-evidence-document-case-has

@DCPatriot . I actually listened to the first 15 minutes just to give her a shot.  And to be honest, I see why you like her.

Not that she's actually a conservative or anything.  Not even close. In those 15 minutes, she explained that she became a Democrat because she sided with the poor over the rich (classic class warfarism).   She first entered Congress when Obama was President, and expressed no disagreement at all with any of Obama's economic policies.   Not Obamacare, not the global warming stuff, none of it.

What she did express were the reasons why she was leaving the party, and that's where I can see how she lines up 100% with MAGA.  So she gave three reasons:

1) she opposed Obama's intervention/bombing campaign in Syria, and that was her only expressed problem with Obama's.policies.  She's basically a neo-isolationist, so that fits right in with MAGA's "America First" policy.

2) she doesn't like how the Justice Department has been weaponized against Trump.  Obviously, that isn't a substantive policy position, but it's obviously something Trump would like.

3). She belies in championing "the people" against "the elites", so her class warfare mentality fits right in with MAGA populism.

So in sum, she's a neo-isolationist populist who believes in wealth redistribution from the elites to "the people", and opposes the prosecutions against Trump.  Not a conservative, but basically MAGA.

You might be on to something with her being Trump's VP pick.

???? So if the CIC has the Constitutional powers over the military how can the military brass revoke those powers?

What am I missing here or not understanding???

Because you called me an "idiot" just prior to that.

Duh.