Trump Lawyers Ask Judge to Dismiss Documents Case Over Moved Evidence

Former President Donald Trump this week filed a motion to dismiss his classified documents case, claiming that officials altered exculpatory evidence. Prosecutors several weeks ago disclosed that the order of materials inside boxes of evidence was moved around. The “original order of documents within the boxes” was not preserved after they were obtained, the motion says. “There are no photographs or logs documenting the nature in which the allegedly classified documents were commingled with personal effects and out of plain view,” his attorneys continued, adding that the evidence ”was materially exculpatory” about allegations that President Trump violated the Espionage Act. Prosecutors under special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the case, have not filed a motion in response to the latest allegations. Judge Cannon has so far declined previous attempts by the former president to dismiss the case, and she has not yet ruled on the June 10 motion. “In fact, the documents in the boxes are not in the same order as when they were seized principally because the filter team made no effort to preserve the documents in that fashion,” former President Trump’s lawyers wrote. In May, Mr. Smith’s team confirmed that some evidence that was obtained from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022 was not in the same condition when it was found. “There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” prosecutors wrote in the filing, adding that the Smith team “acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what government counsel previously understood and represented to the court.” They have contended that even though materials were reordered, the boxes still contain the same evidence when taken from Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Smith’s office requested that former President Trump’s lawyers include a statement from the Smith team in the June 10 filing to dismiss the case, saying that the “defendant has failed to provide factual or legal support for a spoliation claim under controlling Eleventh Circuit and Supreme Court case law.” “The government has met and exceeded its discovery and other legal obligations. The defendant’s misconduct allegations are, once again, false,” the special counsel’s office stated, according to a comment attached to the June 10 motion. Judge Cannon the same day denied a Trump motion to have several charges tossed. However, she ruled that a paragraph in one of the indictments be stricken from the record. It primarily pertains to an allegation that the former president showed off sensitive military information to one of his aides after he left the White House. The judge said in her order that “the identified deficiencies, even if generating some arguable confusion, are either permitted by law, raise evidentiary challenges not appropriate for disposition at this juncture, and/or do not require dismissal even if technically deficient, so long as the jury is instructed appropriately and presented with adequate verdict forms as to each Defendants’ alleged conduct.” In other rulings, the judge has scrapped arguments from the Trump team that suggest he was authorized under the Presidential Records Act to retain the classified documents after leaving the White House. Judge Cannon scheduled three pretrial hearings for late June but has postponed the submission of evidence in the classified documents case until at least next month as she considers motions. There has been no trial date set for former President Trump or the two co-defendants in the case—Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira. This comes after former President Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in a New York case, becoming the first former U.S. chief executive to be convicted of a felony crime. He has vowed to appeal the verdict. His sentencing date is set for July 11, or four days before the start of the Republican National Convention that will likely nominate him as the GOP presidential candidate. The Epoch Times contacted the Department of Justice for comment on June 12.