Former President Donald Trump’s “deception” differentiates him from other politicians who have been accused of mishandling classified information, special counsel Jack Smith’s team said in a filing to the judge overseeing his documents case.
Smith in a 29-page filing to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon detailed how Trump’s case is different from those of President Joe Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Mike Pence and former FBI Director James Comey.
“This is a remarkable document in which Smith compares Trump's actions to a long list of high-profile people accused of mishandling classified info. In a nutshell, none of them were as brazenly obstructive as Trump, he argues,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney tweeted.
This is a remarkable document in which Smith compares Trump's actions to a long list of high-profile people accused of mishandling classified info. In a nutshell, none of them were as brazenly obstructive as Trump, he agues. https://t.co/lzO5HSYLRe pic.twitter.com/v44qAZLbgp
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 7, 2024
“While each of them, to varying degrees, bears a slight resemblance to this case … none is alleged to have willfully retained a vast trove of highly sensitive, confidential materials and repeatedly sought to thwart their lawful return and engaged in a multi-faceted scheme of deception and obstruction,” the filing says. “There is no one who is similarly situated.”
Smith noted that while Biden’s case has “superficial similarities” to Trump’s, Trump stashed his documents in a “social club” accessed by hundreds of people and then engaged in a campaign of “deception” to prevent investigators from recovering the documents.
“Trump appears to contend that it was President Biden who actually made the decision to seek the charges in this case; that Biden did so solely for unconstitutional reasons; and that this decision was somehow foisted on the Special Counsel through a newspaper article, a press conference, and an interview that each preceded the Special Counsel’s appointment,” Smith writes. “That theory finds no support in evidence or logic. Indeed, the very sources Trump relies on undercut his claim.”
Smith noted that Trump’s posts on Truth Social, in which he claimed he “openly and transparently” took documents home and insisted he had “declassified” them, are further evidence against him.
“If he persists in these declassification claims, that, too, would provide additional evidence that he knowingly possessed the documents,” Smith argued.
