Special counsel Jack Smith Thursday handed over nearly 500 pages of materials to Donald Trump after the former president's lawyers accused him "extraordinary" misconduct in the classified documents case, court records show.
In his letter to Florida federal court judge Aileen Cannon, Smith takes a stiff tone when he reports delivering 457 pages of discovery materials linked to Trump's accusations that the Justice department tampered with evidence.
"The Government’s position [is] that such production exceeds its current discovery obligations," Smith writes.
This measured remark stands in stark contrast to the letter from Trump's lead attorney Todd Blanche which spurred Thursday's massive document dump, court records show.
On May 4, Blanche accused Smith of "extraordinary breach of your constitutional and ethical obligations" regarding boxes of documents seized from Trump's social club Mar-a-Lago.
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"We find your contentions to be self-serving and frivolous given your indefensible handling of the evidence at issue—you cannot seriously contend that your recent spoliation concession is irrelevant to President Trump’s pending pretrial motions," Blanche wrote.
In a further request for back-up from Cannon, dated May 6, Blanche sneered at Smith's "dismissive and condescending tone."
The subject of this tense legal battle is Smith's earlier admission that some documents were rearranged before they were scanned into the Justice department's system.
While Smith's team described the incident as an inconsistency, Blanche argued prosecutors were guilty of a "full-throated but now concededly false assertions of compliance with their discovery obligations."
This aligns with Trump's consistent messaging that the Justice Department is partaking in a political witch hunt to torpedo his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
