On May 7, Florida Judge Aileen Cannon postponed former President Donald Trump’s classified documents trial after explosive information dropped late Friday afternoon. Several new pieces of evidence indicate it’s even possible federal employees planted classified documents to frame Trump.
Even if what happened isn’t that nefarious — although exactly that scenario has already been deployed against Trump several times — not only could the case be thrown out of court, but some federal lawyers may have risked their licenses for mishandling evidence.
As time goes on, the lawfare cases are looking increasingly like coverups of government attempts to imprison Democrats’ top political opponent by framing him with crimes he didn’t do. It’s yet another indication the federal government is using the U.S. legal system to serve extremist partisans instead of justice, destroying equality before the law.
Did the Feds Plant the Classified Documents that Prompted This Case?
Recent court disclosures give two indications that federal employees could have planted the classified documents used to mire Trump and several aides into a sprawling investigation and an election-interfering court case. The first is the explosive evidence revealed Friday: For 11 months, the special counsel’s office hid that it misplaced some — we don’t know how many or which — of the same allegedly classified documents it claims Trump criminally possessed at Mar-a-Lago.
In that news-dump-timed filing Friday afternoon, the special counsel’s office revealed that when federal agents took boxes of papers from Trump’s home in an unprecedented FBI raid, they took out what they thought might be classified documents the president allegedly was not allowed to possess. They say they marked these documents’ original location in the boxes with “placeholder” sheets of paper marked for an inventory.
Yet after these boxes were removed to the FBI’s Washington field office for further inspection, the special counsel says, they discovered the boxes were not in the same state as when they were seized at Mar-a-Lago. When attempting to piece the boxes back together, the special counsel’s office said, “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet” (emphasis added).
The filing also says the FBI “generally” inserted the “handwritten sheets,” indicating there were exceptions to its use of placeholders to indicate the allegedly original locations of allegedly classified documents Trump allegedly criminally possessed. In a footnote, the special counsel writes that this situation is “inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court.” In other words, the special counsel has been lying to the court, the public, and the Trump legal team this whole time about the evidence grounding its entire case.
If they didn’t always use placeholders to mark moved documents and don’t know what documents some placeholders correspond to, some documents could be missing — or added. If there is no reliable and provable inventory of the seized document boxes, how can anyone trust the boxes accurately represent what Trump had? The DOJ admits the boxes were tampered with and are not in their original condition!
Second, there’s the also newly uncovered fact that a federal agency sent “two pallets” of documents to Mar-a-Lago while the National Archives and Records Administration was setting up this documents case. It’s unknown who all had access to these document boxes during their packing, temporary storage in Virginia, and transit to Trump’s home. Were those boxes a setup too? Imagine if some boxes the feds sent amid NARA’s dispute with Trump were also boxes the DOJ can’t verify as being in their original state.
Potential Consequences: Tossing Case, Punishing Lawyers
In a May 4 letter, Trump’s defense argues the document-tampering corrupts the special counsel’s entire case: “[I]t was our understanding that most, and potentially all, of the charged documents were buried within the boxes and located next to other items that provided favorable context.” Corrupting any allegedly classified documents at issue in this case, they say, eliminates legal defense possibilities, making this case moot.
“The theory behind spoliation inference is that when a party has destroyed evidence, it shows that the party had consciousness of guilt or other reasons to avoid evidence. Hence, the court will conclude that the evidence was not in spoliator’s favor,” says USlegal.com.
Spoilation is not only a federal crime, but it risks the licenses of any lawyers who do it, as it violates the American Bar Association’s codes of conduct. Sanctions for spoilation include lawsuits against those alleged to have committed it and dismissing affected cases. That would be especially appropriate here, as the entire case rests on documents the DOJ has admittedly tampered with.
Biden’s White House Helped Instigate Classified Docs Lawfare
We also learned just last week that the White House and Department of Justice lawyers colluded with NARA to develop what became the special counsel’s classified documents indictment, starting an entire year before the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, according to documents reviewed by reporter Julie Kelly. Just the News reports the collusion between NARA and the White House could have begun as early as a few weeks into the Biden presidency, according to White House visitor logs.
So of course the classified documents case didn’t arise from concern over legal improprieties, as the complete lack of prosecution for the same conduct from Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and DOJ leakers also proves. It was a political hit from the beginning, using federal agencies and resources to strangle Democrats’ top political opponent and override the votes of half the country. Talk about an insurrection.
The current lawfare cases against Trump are as legally and morally defensible as impeaching him over a Democrat smear operation falsely labeling him a Russian spy. Yet multiple media have claimed the classified docs case is the “strongest” of the five (or seven) attempting to bankrupt and jail Trump so Republicans can’t win the presidency. Outlets describing this case that way include Slate, Reason, The New York Times, BBC, The Hill, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic.
The ‘Strongest’ Case Is a Setup
The case “is absolutely airtight,” a Georgia State professor told the BBC. The Wall Street Journal described the case as “serious” and contrasted Trump’s allegedly “willful” retention of classified documents with Hillary Clinton’s — accidental? — illegal use of a private server containing classified documents. National Review Editor Ramesh Ponnuru called the classified docs case “the most solid case against Trump.”
Really? These are the same agencies that willingly laundered Russian disinformation from Democrats’ presidential candidate through the DOJ and FBI with Spygate, affecting now three election cycles. They’re the same people who lied about Ukraine to protect Biden corruption with a defensive impeachment of Trump, and whose intel agency heads lied their heads off claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
They’re the same people who lied to a secret court to spy on Trump’s campaign after apparently setting up a volunteer through dodgy intel contacts. They’re the same people who amped up the “Russia, Russia!” narrative by arranging a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Don Trump Jr. that he thought was a waste of his time but sure made a strong smear-by-association news cycle.
Steven D’Antuono, the guy running the Washington field office when it tampered with the documents in Trump’s case, is the same guy who oversaw the FBI entrapment of a bunch of shiftless dudes into a hoax kidnapping “conspiracy” against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. D’Antuono was also imported back to D.C. just in time to “investigate” the Jan. 6 riots, where the same people and agencies stonewalled the release of security videos because they could reveal participating federal agents and informants.
If tampered evidence presented by hardened propagandists and high-level scam artists like these is the “strongest” case the DOJ can muster against Trump, that says about everything Americans need to know.