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Special counsel Jack Smith’s defense team on Friday rejected former President Donald Trump’s claims of political bias in a Florida classified documents case.
The 67-page filing comes as Mr. Trump’s lawyers ask prosecutors to turn over certain documents they say show evidence of bias or misconduct surrounding records recovered from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago mansion. This is in response to the efforts of Mr. Smith’s team asked the court to deny Mr. Trump’s request outright.
“Discovery requests must be based on specific, case-related requests for matters important to defense preparation,” prosecutors wrote. He added that Trump’s team was seeking records “instead of meeting these criteria” that were “based on speculative, unsubstantiated and false theories of political bias and hostility.”
Prosecutors argued that President Trump’s recent court filings were intended to “cast a cloud of doubt on the responsible conduct of government employees who are diligently doing their jobs.”
“Referring to authorities authorized to consider security concerns in the wake of the revelation that Mr. Trump had classified records at Mar-a-Lago was still entirely appropriate and in no way politicized. “This does not represent any bias,” they wrote.
Prosecutors also challenged the Trump team’s timeline of events leading up to the Mar-a-Lago raid. They defended the National Archives and Records Administration’s formal referral to the Justice Department in February 2022, saying it came after “months of effort” to recover government documents from Trump after he left office. insisted.
Trump’s press secretary and lawyer did not respond to requests for comment Friday night.
Friday’s filing comes after President Trump’s lawyers said in a filing last month that prosecutors conducted a “politically motivated and biased” investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents with the intent of damaging the 2024 presidential election. The move comes after he indicated that he planned to claim that he had done so.
Trump’s lawyers touted Trump’s victory in the Iowa caucuses and accused prosecutors of ignoring discovery obligations and Justice Department policies in an effort to slow Trump’s presidential campaign on behalf of the Biden administration. He was accusing them of being in trouble.
President Trump acquitted of charges of knowingly retaining national defense information and planning to delete surveillance video related to classified documents discovered in his Mar-a-Lago home more than a year after leaving office admitted. Mar-a-Lago property.
Co-defendants Walt Nauta, chief of staff, and Carlos de Oliveira, a maintenance supervisor at Mar-a-Lago, have pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from their alleged involvement in efforts to remove security videos. did.
The case is currently scheduled to go to trial in May. The trial was originally scheduled to begin after President Trump’s federal election destruction trial in Washington, D.C., but the judge overseeing the case postponed the trial on Friday and it will no longer begin on March 4. I wrote. The appeals court has not yet considered President Trump’s ruling. Arguing that the case should be dismissed because of presidential immunity.
The postponement in Washington means the former president’s next trial will likely be the Manhattan district attorney’s case, scheduled to begin March 25. President Trump is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to allegations that he paid hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels just before the end of his 2016 presidential campaign. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
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