Prosecutors release new photos of ‘closely guarded secrets’ in cluttered boxes at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

Special prosecutor Jack Smith defended federal law enforcement agencies’ handling of documents discovered at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, releasing photos in new court filings that show how the former president hid “top secret” materials and government “secrets” ” in a cluttered collection of clothes, Christmas decorations, newspapers and photos of himself.

The former president argued that charges in his case involving secret documents should be dropped because investigators did not preserve the evidence in the order in which they were found.

In photos accompanying Monday evening’s 33-page filing, documents marked “secret” and “top secret” or bearing the White House emblem are stuffed into cardboard boxes next to piles of golf shirts, lying on top of old newspapers, and then into cases of Diet Coke.

One photo shows a closet where newspapers and other documents are spilling out onto the floor from overturned boxes.

Smith’s team wrote that Trump “personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets in cardboard boxes along with a collection of other personally selected memorabilia of various sizes and shapes from his presidency – newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas decorations, magazines, clothing and photos of him and other people.”

After leaving the White House in January 2021, Trump took his “cluttered collection of memorabilia” to his Florida home, “where boxes traveled from one easily accessible location to another – a public ballroom, office space, bathroom and basement utility room” – prosecutors say.

“Based on the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to store his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items in the boxes as they left the White House was critical to his defense and, furthermore, that the FBI agents executing the search warrant in August 2022 should have known about it,” they added.

Smith urged U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee — to reject Trump’s “bad faith” argument that ignores the “unsurprising reality that the order of some of the items may have changed since then.”

FBI agents who searched the property after Trump allegedly evaded government attempts to recover the missing documents “did so professionally, thoroughly and carefully under difficult circumstances, particularly given the cluttered condition of the boxes and the significant amount of top secret documents that Trump retained.” ” – prosecutors added.

Trump has previously falsely claimed that he declassified the documents, that FBI agents planted them or that the boxes were packed as his “personal papers” after he left the White House.

According to prosecutors, his latest “deeply flawed” defense based on “destruction of evidence” is “another attempt at his latest baseless accusations against law enforcement officers doing their jobs.”

Trump faces 40 separate charges over accusations he hid hundreds of documents at his Florida estate and then conspired to obstruct the government’s recovery of them.

He pleaded not guilty.

During a series of courtroom hearings over three days, Judge Cannon heard Trump’s lawyers argue that Smith’s office was created and funded unconstitutionally.

The special counsel’s team also asked the judge to impose a strict silence order to prevent the former president from making statements that could endanger FBI agents.