Judge Aileen Cannon has indefinitely delayed the court case involving Trump's handling of classified documents. Judge Cannon had made other decision that slowed the progress of the court case but this recent delay makes it almost certain that the case won't be tried before the election.
Former President Trump calls for arrest of special prosecutor Jack Smith
wislawjournal.com
... On Monday, former President Donald Trump sent an email to his supporters calling for the arrest of one of the prosecutors appointed to his election interference and classified documents cases.
Trump email
"BIDEN PROSECUTOR JACK SMITH ADMITS TO MISHANDLING EVIDENCE!," Trump wrote in Monday's email.
"Out of control prosecutor Jack Smith just ADMITTED to tampering with evidence in the one of the WITCH HUNT BIDEN TRIALS being waged against me," Trump continued.
"Crooked Joe & his corrupt DOJ want to tear this country apart," Trump added.
"BECAUSE IF THEY CAN TAKE ME DOWN, THEN THEY'LL COME AFTER YOU NEXT!" Trump concluded. ...
According to court documents obtained by the Wisconsin Law Journal, "there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans." ...
Did you guys know that the FBI messed up the order of the box found in Joe Biden's garage?:
FBI got the documents that had been in the box out of order when they repackaged them.
When FBI agents repackaged the contents of the ripped garage box into a new box on December 21, 2022, it appears the order of a few of the materials changed slightly. This chapter discusses in detail below two folders that contained marked classified documents about Afghanistan: the manila "Afganastan" folder and the red "Facts First" folder. It appears the "Afganastan" folder was near the "Facts First" folder in the garage box when agents recovered the box, but the precise original location of the "Afganastan" folder at that time is unknown.
www.emptywheel.net
If the FBI couldn't keep the documents straight in one of Biden's boxes that only had a few classified documents in it, is it any wonder that they couldn't keep them straight in one of Trump's many boxes that had so many classified documents in them that they ran out of cover sheets used to indicate the place where classified documents had been removed:
But he [Smith] concedes, first of all, that after the search team ran out of cover sheets because there were far more classified documents than they imagined, they used hand-written papers to mark where classified records had been found.https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/05/06/stan-woodwards-manufactured-scandal-about-box-a-15/
The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized. The investigative team seized any box that was found to contain documents with classification markings or presidential records.
And then they made sure that each box was handled separately, to ensure that the contents of each individual box remained separate. They failed, however, to keep all the boxes in the same order.
The Government has taken steps to ensure that documents and placeholders remained within the same box as when they were seized, i.e., to prevent any movement of documents from one box to another. The FBI was present when an outside vendor scanned the documents in connection with the now-closed civil case (see, e.g., Trump v. United States, Case No. 22-81294- CIV-CANNON, ECF No. 91 at 2 (requiring the Government to inventory the property seized from Mar-a-Lago); id. at ECF No. 125 at 3 (requiring the Government to "make available to Plaintiff and the Special Master copies of all Seized Materials" in electronic format by October 13, 2022)), and the boxes were kept separate during that process. When the FBI created the inventories, each inventory team worked on a single box at a time, separated from other teams. And during defense counsel's review, any boxes open at the same time (and any personnel reviewing those boxes) were kept separate from one another. In other words, there is a clear record of which boxes contained classified documents when seized, and this information has long been in the defense's possession, as discussed infra at 9
It is easier to understand how they messed up the order of Trump's box when you consider the volume of material and the complex way Trump's boxes had to be handled:
4. Location of Classified Documents Within Each Boxwww.emptywheel.net
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. The inventories and scans created during the civil proceedings were later produced in discovery in this criminal case. Because these inventories and scans were created close in time to the seizure of the documents, they are the best evidence available of the order the documents were in when seized. That said, there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.3 There are several possible explanations, including the above-described instances in which the boxes were accessed, as well as the size and shape of certain items in the boxes possibly leading to movement of items. For example, the boxes contain items smaller than standard paper such as index cards, books, and stationary, which shift easily when the boxes are carried, especially because many of the boxes are not full. . . .
3 The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court. See, e.g., 4/12/24 Hearing Tr. at 65 (Government responding to the Court's question of whether the boxes were "in their original, intact form as seized" by stating "[t]hey are, with one exception; and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents").
. . .
Plus, it's worth noting which box Woodward {Nauta's attorney] is focused on, A-15. That box happens to have, easily, the biggest number of classified documents in it, 32; a third of the items originally in the box were marked classified. And probably 11 of them, those marked Confidential, have since been declassified and provided in unclassified discovery.
In total, the FBI seized 77 documents with classification markings from the 12 boxes that were seized from the Storage Room, but of those 77 documents, 26 have now been produced in unclassified discovery.
77 classified documents in 12 boxes from one storage? To say nothing of the boxes from other locations and or the ones that have gone missing to God knows where. But, hey, not to worry because the FBI and/or prosecutors fumbled the ball. Trump truly is the luckiest SOB, but America won't be so lucky when it comes to matters of national security if Trump becomes president again, and that's the one thing Cannon, the SC and Repubicans who champion TFG don't seem to give a damn about.
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