Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump seized on a mistake by special counsel Jack Smith's office on Friday, which admitted it mishandled classified documents that Trump stands accused of mishandling.
Smith's federal prosecutors conceded in a court filing Friday that the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 are not in the same order they previously said.
Prosecutors said the current jumbled nature of the documents is "inconsistent" with their previous assertions — that the boxes of docs remained "in their original, intact form as seized."
Trump excoriated Smith over the gaffe.
"It has always been clear that the 'Documents Case' is nothing but an Election Interference Scam concocted by Crooked Joe Biden, Deranged Jack Smith, and their Hacks and Thugs," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. "Now, Deranged Jack has admitted in a filing in front of Judge Cannon to what I have been saying happened since the Illegal RAID on my home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida — That he and his team committed blatant Evidence Tampering by mishandling the very Boxes they used as a pretext to bring this Fake Case."
The concession by prosecutors came after Trump co-defendant Waltine "Walt" Nauta's legal team asked for a delay because they were having a hard time locating certain documents in the 33 boxes seized by the FBI, Politico reported.
"There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans," prosecutors wrote.
They added in a footnote: "The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court."
"These deeply Illegal actions by the Politicized 'Persecutors' mandate that this whole Witch Hunt be DROPPED IMMEDIATELY," Trump wrote.
The classified documents trial is scheduled to begin May 20 in Fort Pierce, Florida, but it's unlikely to stay that way. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is mulling a request from both prosecutors and Trump's defense team for a new trial date.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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