NTD
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team made a startling admission in its case against former President Donald Trump, acknowledging in a new court filing that it failed to turn over all evidence to Mr. Trump’s legal team as required by law while falsely claiming it had.
Mr. Smith’s team said in a July 31 court filing (pdf) in its classified documents case against the former president that it had incorrectly claimed during a July 18 court hearing that it had provided all Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage to Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys, as required by law.
“On July 27, as part of the preparation for the superseding indictment coming later that day and the discovery production for Defendant De Oliveira, the Government learned that this footage had not been processed and uploaded to the platform established for the defense to view the subpoenaed footage,” Mr. Smith’s team wrote in the latest filing.
“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,” it added.
Under the so-called Brady rule, prosecutors in a criminal trial have a constitutional duty to disclose all evidence to a defendant’s legal team, including information that is favorable to the accused and could reduce a potential sentence.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) did not immediately return a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
Mr. Smith’s team’s admission carries a hint of irony as it accused Mr. Trump in a new “superseding indictment” (pdf) filed on July 27 of conspiring with his staff to delete some security footage so that the grand jury in the case would not see all the evidence.
Trump Denies Deleting Tapes
In the superseding indictment, the special counsel charged Mr. Trump with willful retention of national defense information and two charges in connection to claims that he allegedly told a Mar-a-Lago worker to delete security tapes to prevent a grand jury from seeing them.
Mar-a-Lago staffer Carlos De Oliveira has been named as a third defendant in the superseding indictment, along with Trump aide Walt Nauta and the former commander-in-chief himself.
Mr. Trump took to his social media platform to deny the new charges, claiming that Mr. Smith’s claim of security tapes being deleted as false and tantamount to election interference ahead of the 2024 contest.
“THE SECURITY TAPES BEING DELETED WAS A MADE UP LIE BY DERANGED JACK SMITH! ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” Mr. Trump wrote in all caps in a post on Truth Social on Aug. 1.
In the superseding indictment, prosecutors allege that Mr. De Oliveira told another Mar-a-Lago employee that “the boss” wanted a server “deleted” on June 27, 2022. That came about two months before FBI agents raided the Palm Beach resort owned by the former president, uncovering allegedly classified documents at a storage area.
Mr. Trump has said he used presidential authority to declassify all the relevant documents in the case against him and has denied that he hid any materials from the government.
In a statement following the July 27 announcement of a superseding indictment and new charges, Mr. Trump’s campaign said it wasa “continued desperate and flailing attempt” to harass the former president.
“Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden,” the campaign team wrote…
