Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of the former president, has accused Special Counsel Jack Smith of having "tampered" with evidence in the classified documents case.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Trump Jr. accused the federal prosecutor of mishandling classified materials after Smith's office admitted to Judge Aileen Cannon that boxes of evidence the FBI retrieved from Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022 are no longer in their "original, intact" form.
In recent filings, Smith acknowledged there are some boxes where the order of items is "not the same" as in the digital scans of the materials. Smith's team added that the evidence may be in a different order as things shift easily when the boxes are carried.
Trump, who has pleaded not guilty to 40 federal charges in relation to the classified documents case, accused Smith of "blatant evidence tampering" in the wake of the filings and called for him to be arrested.
Trump Jr. has now expressed similar criticism of Smith while sharing a clip of his online show ,Triggered, featuring an interview with reporter Julie Kelly.
"So as it turns out, Jack Smith and his team tampered with evidence. Or to put it another way: Mishandled classified materials," Trump Jr. wrote. "Whatever the left accuses everyone else of doing is exactly what they're doing themselves!!!"
During the clip he shared on social media, Trump Jr. also repeated the suggestion that the federal case against the presumptive Republican 2024 candidate is politically motivated.
"If this was Trump doing it to Biden or Obama before him [MSNBC host] Rachel Maddow would talk about this thing 24/7, 365 for 15 years," Trump Jr. said. "It would be the only talking point of the left, they'd run elections around it ...it's not like it's one thing that's an error. It's just one after the other after the other and it's like, well, if they get away with one, then it's just a snowball effect."
Smith's office has been contacted for comment via email.
Trump Jr. made the remakes before Cannon pushed back the start of the classified documents trial indefinitely, increasing the likelihood the former president will not appear before a Florida jury before November's election.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Cannon said there are several other legal issues and deadlines that need to be resolved before she can confirm the start of the proceedings. The trial was originally set for May 20, but Cannon was long expected to postpone it beyond this date.
Instead of confirming a new trial date, Cannon rescheduled a number of pretrial deadlines, including one related to the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) on July 22, meaning the trial will definitely not start before then.
"The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court's duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury," Cannon wrote.
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Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
