In a recent legal development, former President Donald Trump's legal team has filed a motion in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, accusing the intelligence community, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by President Biden, of bias against Trump.
Smith is concurrently prosecuting another case related to the 2020 election and the events of January 6 in a DC court.
The motion requests the judge to order Smith's team to disclose materials pertinent to the case. It alleges that "The Special Counsels Office has disregarded basic discovery obligations and DOJ policies in an effort to support the Biden Administrations egregious efforts to weaponize the criminal justice system in pursuit of an objective that President Biden cannot achieve on the campaign trail: slowing down President Trumps leading campaign in the 2024 presidential election."
The document further criticizes the Special Counsel's Office, stating, "The patent absurdity of the Offices efforts is illustrated by the fact that, while working toward a historic landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses yesterday, President Trump was also preparing to bring to Your Honors attention today the record of misrepresentations and discovery violations that have marred this case from the outset and illustrate that the Office has disregarded fundamental fairness and its legal obligations in favor of partisan election interference."
The motion claims that new evidence, obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, "reveals that politically motivated operatives in the Biden Administration and the National Archives and Records Administration began this crusade against President Trump in 2021." The FOIA releases, along with evidence contained in the more than 1.2 million pages of discovery, "reflect close participation in the investigation by NARA and Biden Administration components such as the White House Counsels Office, as well as senior officials at DOJ and FBI."
Trump's team alleges collusion between Smiths office and "the White House, DOJ, FBI, and NARA to use the Presidential Records Act (PRA) as a law enforcement tool, and to abuse grand jury procedures, in violation of due process, other constitutional rights, and the executive privilege."
The motion also highlights that the Department of Energy, in June of 2023, moved to terminate Trumps security clearance. The team is seeking records related to this decision, as such records "are relevant to the issue of whether any possession of allegedly unclassified documents in 2021 and 2022 was 'unauthorized.'"
Furthermore, Trumps team is demanding Smiths office to disclose "all evidence relating to what the Office previously described to the Court as 'temporary secure locations' at Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster, and Trump Tower and related SCIFs at 'offsite locations."
The team is also seeking "Communications with prosecution team members regarding the underlying investigation by members, relatives, or associates of the Biden Administration," asserting that such materials are "discoverable because they support President Trumps defense regarding the politically motivated nature of the prosecution."
The motion points to previous private and public statements from Biden that he was making sure Trump would not become President again, stating that "This sequence of events supports President Trumps defense that the charges against him are politically motivated."
The case is currently scheduled for trial on May 20, but Trump has requested to postpone the trial until after the election.
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