Trump classified documents case: Prosecutors release new photos

Federal prosecutors in Donald Trump’s classified documents case have released new photos showing the “haphazard way” in which Trump stored boxes of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.

Application Documents President Trump’s recent Motion to Dismiss A lawsuit alleging that FBI agents destroyed “exculpatory evidence” by failing to preserve documents in the same order in which they were discovered.

Prosecutors presented photos showing various items, including papers strewn on the floor and clothes and newspapers inside boxes, and said Trump’s motion to dismiss should be denied without a hearing.

“Mr. Trump argues that the precise order of the items in the box when it left the White House was material to his defense, given Mr. Trump’s haphazard choice to store the box,” prosecutors, led by special counsel Jack Smith, wrote in a filing on Monday evening.

Prosecutors not only denied Trump’s assertion that such an order existed, but also argued that federal investigators “preserved the integrity of each container in which evidence was found – box to box.”

“The FBI agents who conducted the search conducted their search professionally, thoroughly and carefully under difficult circumstances, given the disarray of the boxes and the sheer volume of classified documents held by Mr. Trump,” they wrote.

The former president faces 40 federal criminal charges for allegedly keeping classified documents after he left office and trying to hide them from federal authorities.

Trump’s trial had been scheduled to begin May 20, but a federal judge last month postponed that date indefinitely. A May 7 ruling by U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon added a slew of new pretrial procedures, making it all but certain that the leading presidential nominee will not go on trial before the November election.

Cannon supervised both of them. A hearing in the case will be held on Monday. The defendants were arraigned in a Fort Pierce, Florida, courtroom, according to NBC News.

The first hearing was on a separate defense motion to dismiss the case, which challenged the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel. The second hearing dealt with the special counsel’s request for a gag order against Trump.