House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has initiated an investigation into Special Counsel Jack Smith after it was revealed that certain evidence in President Trump’s ‘classified’ documents case was tampered with by the FBI following their raid on Mar-a-Lago.
The admission from Jack Smith came after concerns raised by Walt Nauta’s legal team about discrepancies in the organization of evidence.
Nauta, a former White House valet and Navy veteran indicted alongside Trump, alleged that the order of items in seized boxes did not match their scan records provided during discovery.
In a recent filing, Smith acknowledged that the FBI had rearranged documents within the boxes containing ‘classified’ information, contradicting previous assurances from the Department of Justice that the contents had remained intact.
A footnote in the motion revealed that the FBI had manipulated the boxes containing ‘classified’ documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
Additionally, it was disclosed that sheets seen in a widely circulated photo indicating classification status were actually placeholders used by the FBI to replace genuine classified documents.
In August 2022, DOJ misled the Court by claiming these colored sheets represented document classification levels when they were actually substitutes for removed classified materials.
The DOJ lied, claiming, “Evidence, thirteen boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings-that is, more than twice the amount produced on June 3, 2022, in response to the grand jury subpoena were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the “45 office”). The classification levels ranged from CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET information, and certain documents included additional sensitive compartments that signify very limited distribution.”
The FBI admitted they messed with Trump’s documents! The FBI used cover sheets as placeholders for the classified documents.
“After the boxes were brought to WFO, the FBI created an index to correlate the documents with classification markings to codes (e.g., document “bb”) and labeled the classified cover sheets in the boxes with the codes for the seized documents. The FBI also generally replaced the handwritten sheets with classified cover sheets annotated with the index code, but regardless, any handwritten sheets that currently remain in the boxes do not represent additional classified documents—they were just not removed when the classified cover sheets with the index code were added. In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.”
Jack Smith also claimed the FBI found so many classified documents that they ran out of ‘slip sheets.’
“The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized,” Jack Smith laughably claimed.
In response to these revelations, President Trump took to Truth Social, calling for the arrest of Jack Smith, labeling the prosecution a “sham.”
“ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!” Trump said in a Truth Social post this weekend.
Chairman Jim Jordan voiced serious worries about the impartiality of the justice system and its compliance with professional standards within the Department of Justice.
In a letter addressed to Jeffrey Ragsdale, Counsel of the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), Jordan stated, “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 insisted that the OPR conduct an investigation into Jack Smith, Jay Bratt (a senior member of Smith’s office), and other attorneys linked to the case due to significant ethical violations in the prosecution.
The House Judiciary Committee has requested the production of 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 prosect of a judgeship for his counsel.
The deadline set for the DOJ to respond to the Committee’s demands for information and a briefing is 5:00 p.m. on May 20, 2024.
#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
