Photos of classified documents laid on floor of Trump’s Florida estate were staged and manipulated by the FBI for political effect.
Special Counsel Jack Smith acknowledged that prosecutors and FBI agents altered the boxes of evidence they obtained from Mar-a-Lago during their search for classified documents.
Smith made the admission in a filing Monday in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump overseen by Florida Judge Aileen Cannon.
“As part of the processing of seized documents marked classified, ERT photographed the documents (with appropriate cover sheets added by FBI personnel) next to the box in which they were located,” Smith wrote.
HOLY SH*T: Special Counsel Jack Smith just admitted the FBI added cover sheets to alleged classified documents found at MAL and took photos for evidence.
This confirms my report from last month that the FBI doctored evidence to produce stunt photos of classified docs at MAL: pic.twitter.com/XOZgolQK6M
— Julie Kelly ?? (@julie_kelly2) June 25, 2024
In the same filing, Smith admitted the FBI agents allegedly found “loose classified cover sheets” in a blue leatherbound box in Trump’s office.
But he also said some of the cover sheets were attached to classified documents.
Now see if you notice the slight shift here.
FBI agents allegedly found “loose classified cover sheets” in a blue leatherbound box in Trump’s office.
Then suddenly–some were attached to classified documents.
Also why are FBI placeholder sheets in classified discovery?? pic.twitter.com/tckEpqz4qG
— Julie Kelly ?? (@julie_kelly2) June 25, 2024
In other words, the FBI tampered with the evidence to create the photos, which resulted in the infamous photo of documents bearing classified markings laid out on the Mar-a-Lago floor that were seized on by the media and Democrats as justification for the unprecedented FBI raid.
Just your reminder that this photo produced by Jack Smith, the DOJ and the FBI during the Mar-a-Lago raid was fabricated. pic.twitter.com/vvRUMrqjNP
— Steve ?? (@SteveLovesAmmo) June 25, 2024
“As I reported last month, the FBI brought colored classified cover sheets to the raid under the guise of using them to substitute classified documents found within Trump’s boxes,” reporter Julie Kelly wrote on X Tuesday.
“Instead, FBI agents attached the scary looking sheets to various files and took photos. In DOJ’s opposition to Trump’s special master lawsuit in 2022, Jay Bratt attached infamous photo as a prop so the media would publish it and claim the papers were found with classified cover sheets.”
Smith’s team last month quietly admitted it misled the court about leaving the evidence untouched, initially claiming it had remained in the exact state it had been seized but later telling the court that FBI personnel “had access to the boxes” and rearranged some of the items inside them.
“Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants’ review of the boxes,” Smith’s team wrote to Judge Cannon in May.
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.”
“The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the footnote in that filing reads.
Defense attorney Tim Parlatore, who had worked on Trump’s team in the documents case, claimed that “admission is stunning on multiple levels.”
“But at a deeper level, the loss of specific document locations is a destruction of exculpatory evidence,” he said.
