Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is defending how the federal government during Joe Biden’s presidency sought to repossess White House records Donald Trump took, and how the case evolved into a federal investigation.
The expansive, 67-page filing offers a detailed retelling of the standoff with Trump as a way to “set the record straight,” Smith’s prosecutors say, on the origins of the Mar-a-Lago documents case, as they fight to keep the case on track for a spring trial.
After the search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate, in August 2022, federal investigators pursued a “careful and thorough investigation,” seeking information from intelligence agencies, the National Archives and other parts of the federal government before bringing criminal charges against Trump for mishandling documents, the special counsel’s office said.
The prosecutors say Trump’s legal team has attempted to distort the events in his favor – including by claiming he had a security clearance that extended past his presidency. He is seeking to convince a federal judge in Florida to force the Justice Department to give him more documents as evidence in the case from several sensitive parts of the federal government, including the Biden White House, the Department of Energy and the US intelligence community.
Prosecutors’ retelling of the investigation on Friday is based on documents they’ve turned over to Trump’s legal team already that may be used as evidence in the upcoming trial against him, according to the filing.
“Federal agencies confronted, and appropriately responded to, an extraordinary situation resulting entirely from the defendants’ conduct,” the prosecutors wrote.
“The law required that those documents be collected,” the prosecutors also said in the…
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