House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has launched an investigation into Special Counsel Jack Smith after he admitted that some of the evidence in President Trump’s “classified” documents case was tampered with after being taken by the FBI during its raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Breaking Digest reported that Jack Smith made the admission in a response to a motion filed by Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta, seeking an extension for disclosures in the classified documents case.
Walt Nauta, a former White House employee and Navy veteran who served as a valet for Trump and worked as a personal staffer at Mar-a-Lago, was indicted alongside Trump last year.
In his response, Jack Smith admitted that the FBI had tampered with the boxes containing “classified” documents seized from Trump, resulting in uncertainty regarding the order and placement of the documents.
In a footnote, Smith’s team quietly admitted that they had misled Judge Aileen Cannon’s courtroom regarding the issue. Previously, they had claimed that the evidence remained unchanged in its original state after seizure.
Footnote 3 (bolding added for emphasis): The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court. See, e.g., 4/12/24 Hearing Tr. at 65 (Government responding to the Court’s question of whether the boxes were “in their original, intact form as seized” by stating “[t]hey are, with one exception; and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents”
In August 2022, the Department of Justice deceived the Court when they asserted that the red, blue, and yellow sheets seen in the viral photo of the classified documents indicated their classification status.
This is how DOJ in August 2022 described the files in
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) May 4, 2024
a filing to Judge Cannon with accompanying photo that went viral to make it appear that this was the original form of the documents seized by FBI.
This does not appear to be the truth–at all. It instead appears that the… pic.twitter.com/yGAgYJMZEt
Over the weekend, in a Truth Social post, President Trump demanded that Jack Smith be arrested following these revelations.
ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!
Chairman Jim Jordan voiced serious concern regarding the justice system’s fairness and adherence to professional standards within the Department of Justice (DOJ).
In a letter directed to Jeffrey Ragsdale, Counsel of the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), Jordan wrote, “This acknowledgment presents grave concerns about the Department’s commitment to impartial justice, whether the Special Counsel’s Office misled a federal court, and whether the Special Counsel’s Office strenuously upheld the highest professional standards of the Department of Justice.”
Jordan demanded that an OPR investigation be launched into Jack Smith, Jay Bratt (a senior member of Smith’s office), and other attorneys involved, citing substantial ethical breaches in the prosecution.
The House Judiciary Committee has formally requested the following documents and information:
- All documents and communications referring or relating to any allegation of ethical impropriety or any OPR investigation concerning the conduct of Jack Smith, Jay Bratt, or any other attorney assigned to work with the Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith;
- All documents and communications referring or relating to the manipulation of documents seized from President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago; and
- All documents and communications referring or relating to Jay Bratt interactions with Walt Nauta’s defense counsel, including allegations that Bratt attempted to coerce Mr.
- Nauta’s cooperation with the government by leveraging the [prospect] of a judgeship for his counsel.
A deadline of May 20, 2024 has been set for the DOJ to respond to the Committee’s demands for information and a briefing.
#NEWS: @Jim_Jordan investigates Jack Smith’s acknowledgment that some of the evidence in President Trump’s classified documents case was altered or manipulated after it was seized by the FBI in its raid on Mar-a-Lago. pic.twitter.com/9Qn6h9D3h5
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) May 7, 2024
