Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team admitted in a federal court filing in Miami this week that the government had not, in fact, given all of its evidence to the court for President Donald Trump’s defense team to review — the same thing Trump is alleged to have done.
Smith has charged Trump with 40 counts in the so-called “documents” case. Among them is the accusation that Trump caused his lawyers to tell the government that they had handed over all of the documents the government wanted, when in fact they had not.
The indictment against Trump alleges that he conspired with his staff to move boxes of documents, and to attempt to delete some video footage, without telling his attorneys, so that the final delivery of documents and video to the government was incomplete.
But in an ironic twist, Smith’s team had to admit to the court in a July 31 filing that it had not, in fact, uploaded all of the video footage that it had taken from Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, to a platform established by the court for the defense to review it.
A little whoopsie from Jack Smith's office.
DOJ admits it did not produce all the Mar-a-Lago camera footage to defense counsel in first batches of discovery==despite making that claim in court last month.
This security video story will get no blaring headlines: pic.twitter.com/rZc9oplXAB
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) August 1, 2023
“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,” Julie Edelstein, a Smith assistant, told the court.
In criminal trials, the defense is entitled to see all of the evidence that the government plans to introduce at trial. Under a rule called the Brady rule, the prosecution has a special duty to disclose anything to the defense that might prove to be exculpatory.
Trump maintains that the Presidential Records Act entitles him to decide which records are his, and which belong to the National Archives; and he denies trying to hide any materials, including classified or “national security” documents, from the government.
The federal grand jury investigating election interference convened Tuesday in Washington D.C., spurring speculation that a possible federal indictment related to the investigation into Jan. 6 against former President Trump may be imminent. The grand jury left the federal courthouse for the day just after 2:00pm on Tuesday afternoon.