In his first response after it’s release, Jack Smith states that special counsel Rob Hur's report that dropped earlier this month makes it clear President Trump's handling of classified documents is not remotely similar to how President Biden handled sensitive national security information.
Smith's first response to the Hur report comes in the 12-page filing from Monday that responds to Trump's request to dismiss the indictment “based on selective and vindictive prosecution.”
According to Hur's report, Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a well-meaning old man with a poor memory. Therefore, the special counsel claimed that it would be challenging to persuade a jury to convict him of a serious felony that necessitates a mental state of willfulness by a then-former president well into his eighties.
The special counsel's team finds Trump's actions unusual, regardless of the fact that many government officials have possessed classified documents after the end of their terms in office, often unintentionally, frequently negligently, and occasionally willfully, as Smith's assistant special counsel David Harbach pointed out on Monday.
“There has never been a case in American history in which a former official has engaged in conduct remotely similar to Trump’s,” Harbach stated.
“When the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) initially sought their return (before learning that they contained classified national defense information), Trump delayed, obfuscated, and dissembled. Faced with the possibility of legal action, he ostensibly agreed to comply with NARA’s requests but in fact engaged in additional deception, returning only a fraction of the documents in his possession while claiming that his production was complete.”
Harbach continues, highlighting how, when presented with a grand jury subpoena demanding the return of the remaining classified documents, Trump attempted to use his own attorney, suggesting that he falsely tell the FBI and grand jury that Trump did not have any documents, and suggesting that his attorney either hide or destroy the documents rather than produce them. The prosecutor stated that Trump enlisted Nauta “in a scheme to deceive the attorney by moving boxes to conceal his continued possession of classified documents” and continued a pattern of “obstructive conduct” by supposedly seeking to have some security camera footage deleted.
Trump has said the security camera footage was actually never deleted, dismissing the assertion as “prosecutorial fiction”.
