Left: Special counsel Jack Smith. Aug. 2023. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)/ Center: Federal prosecutors say FBI agents seized these materials from Mar-a-Lago. The contents of the documents were redacted with white squares. (Image via an Aug. 31, 2022, federal court filing.)/Right: Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media at a Washington hotel, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, after attending a hearing before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals at the federal courthouse in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
In a motion to compel discovery for Donald Trump’s defense in his upcoming classified documents trial in Florida, lawyers for the former president launched a tirade of conspiracy-theory-laden accusations at special counsel Jack Smith including claims that prosecutors are hiding evidence.
The accusations are interspersed through a 68-page motion filed in the U.S. District Court in Florida and echo those that Trump’s attorneys have made in other venues where the former president has been indicted, including in Washington, D.C., for allegedly criminally conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump’s lawyers have been busy with discovery requests on numerous fronts as his wide-ranging legal battles evolve.
In December, attorneys tried to get the judge in Trump’s Georgia-based RICO indictment to help them with access to discovery in the Washington, D.C., case but to no avail. In Florida, this latest attempt to acquire exculpatory evidence rests almost entirely on claims that seem difficult to parse reasonably or rationally. Trump’s lawyers say there are “politically motivated operatives” in President Joe Biden’s administration that launched a “crusade” against him as far back as 2021 and therefore, records are being withheld at the National Archives that would reveal the political persecution angle of his defense.
Smith and his team of prosecutors, Trump attorney Christopher Kise writes, are seeking to “avert its eyes from exculpatory evidence in the hands of the senior officials” not just at the Archives but at numerous agencies like, he claims, FBI, the Justice Department, the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Energy, the National Security Agency, the State Department and others.
Channeling Trump’s stump speeches and rallies, Kise levels the accusations at Smith without providing much in the filing despite its length to substantiate the allegations that prosecutors are hiding the ball. A large portion of the motion is redacted and as The Messenger noted, there are citations and references to other proceedings that are not public record, either.
Historically in the Florida case, presiding U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has shown favor on Trump’s defense team, most recently granting the former president a legal victory by rejecting Smith’s attempt to pry open what Trump’s defense strategy will be in her courtroom.
Trump’s motion to compel discovery Tuesday however, appears to expose what part of that could look like.
“One of the ways in which President Trump will challenge that testimony is by demonstrating that the Intelligence Community has operated with a bias against him dating back to at least the 2019 whistleblower complaint relating to his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy,” Kise wrote.
Trump was impeached for the first time in his presidency for that call and his abuse of power and obstruction; Trump had asked Zelensky to publicly announce two investigations, one meant to embarrass Trump’s then-potential 2020 election opponent, Joe Biden, with allegations involving his son Hunter and Burisma Holdings LLC, a Ukrainian natural gas company where Hunter once sat on the board.
As first reported by The New York Times, the motion notably also seeks information on Thomas Windom, one of the prosecutors now leading the special counsel’s team of attorneys in Washington, D.C. Trump’s lawyers say Windom conducted more than a dozen interviews on the special counsel’s behalf in their probe of the records that ultimately led to Trump’s indictment.
“Collectively, these considerations reveal that there is no principled basis for limiting the scope of the prosecution team to attorneys at the Office deemed to be ‘working on the case.’ Discovery obligations and casefile reviews must cover all of the Office’s personnel,” Kise wrote.
