Special Council Jack Smith shot back at former President Donald Trump’s bid to delay his upcoming trial on mishandling classified documents, calling the arguments ‘distorted.’ File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Oct. 9 (UPI) — Special Counsel Jack Smith on Monday urged the judge in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case to reject his bid to delay the trial past the 2024 presidential election.
In a 13-page response to Trump’s motion filed last week, Smith called arguments that Trump’s lawyers can’t get timely access to prosecutors’ evidence “distorted and exaggerated.”
Smith instead pleaded with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, to turn back their request — as she has a previous attempt to delay the trial — and move ahead with a scheduled May 20 start date.
The special counsel has charged Trump with 37 felonies, including more than 30 violations of the Espionage Act plus conspiring to obstruct justice and making false statements, over his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump’s lawyers last week accused Smith’s office of failing to turn over some of the basic discovery documents in the case and of “clinging to an unprecedented and now untenable” schedule, arguing the trial’s start date should be moved back to “at least mid-November 2024.”
That would put the start of the case beyond the 2024 presidential election, for which Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
But the special counsel shot back on Monday, calling accusations of failing to turn over evidence “unfounded,” “distorted and exaggerated” and non-credible.
In his filing, Smith acknowledged that the sensitive nature of the classified documents in question have presented “logistical issues unique to this case,” but, he added, Trump’s allegations that those “logistical impediments” are prosecutors’ fault “are wrong.”
Rather, he claimed, the former president has been given “extensive, prompt, and well-organized unclassified discovery, yielding an exhaustive roadmap of proof of the detailed allegations in the superseding indictment.”
Smith argued that within eight days of Trump’s arraignment in June, prosecutors had already supplied his attorneys with vast troves of evidence, including 800,000 pages of unclassified discovery containing 4,500 pages of key documents and all grand jury testimony.
Among the other items turned over to Trump’s team were evidence obtained through search warrants and subpoenas and CCTV footage from Mar-a-Lago, with key moments identified.
The special counsel also dismissed as “misleading” Trump’s arguments that security requirements for reviewing the sensitive documents are so onerous a delay is required.
Only a “small collection” of documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago are deemed so sensitive that they require special measures to protect, transport and store them, Smith countered, noting that a facility in Washington will be made available to Trump and his lawyers to review them by the end of the week.
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