The team of Special Counsel Jack Smith has acknowledged that in the case involving the classified materials against former President Donald Trump, they misspoke when they claimed they had provided the evidence as required by law.
When they were preparing to indict Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira last week for allegedly conspiring with Trump to delete surveillance footage from the estate, prosecutors discovered that video used as evidence “had not been processed and uploaded to the platform established for the defense to view,” Smith’s team wrote in a filing.
“The Government’s representation at the July 18 hearing that all surveillance footage the Government had obtained pre-indictment had been produced was therefore incorrect,” the prosecutors added.
“All CCTV footage obtained by the government has now been given to the defendants, according to Smith’s team. The so-called Brady rule requires prosecutors to disclose all evidence and information favorable to the defendant,” Just The News reported.
Trump entered a not-guilty plea to the charges that he tried to rig the 2020 election on Thursday following his third detention and court hearing in four months.
A gloomy man In a navy blue suit, a red tie, and a white shirt, Trump arrived in court to be arraigned at roughly 4 o’clock. He sat with his hands folded on the table in front of him and his head lowered, between his attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro.
The court system is unfair, Trump told reporters as he boarded his Boeing 757.
“This is a very sad day for America,” he said before leaving Reagan National Airport for New Jersey. Trump called the case the “persecution of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America.”
Prior to his court appearance, Trump responded angrily to Smith’s filing of new charges in his case involving secret data, indicting a third Trump associate in the process.
Trump was charged with new offenses last week, including obstruction and the deliberate retention of material necessary for national defense, in a superseding indictment brought by Smith. The prosecutors claimed that Trump and his associates were responsible for telling a member of staff at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to purposefully remove security camera recordings. According to Smith, the move was done to stop the presentation of evidence before a federal grand jury.
However, Trump categorically refuted the accusations and asserted that he had made sure that his legal staff provided all security footage that had been requested in an unaltered form.
“Mar-a-Lago security tapes were not deleted,” Trump wrote on TRUTH Social. “They were voluntarily handed over to the thugs, headed up by deranged Jack Smith. We did not even go to court to stop them from getting these tapes. I never told anybody to delete them. Prosecutorial fiction & misconduct! Election interference!”
In a subsequent post, he compared the current allegations against him to the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.”
“They knowingly accuse you of a fake crime, a crime that they actually makeup, you fight these false charges hard, and they try and get you on ‘obstruction.’ We are dealing with sick and evil people!” he added.
In a different instance, Smith re-indicted Trump as a result of his inquiry into the violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
According to Fox News, “This is the second federal indictment the former president faces out of Smith’s investigation. Trump, who leads the 2024 GOP presidential primary field, has already pleaded not guilty to 37 counts related to his alleged improper retention of classified records from his presidency.”
In that investigation, Trump is accused of making false statements, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and deliberate retention of national security material, among other things.
He was also charged with three additional counts as part of a superseding indictment that was released last week in connection with the same investigation.