According to a bombshell sealed court filing, reported on by ABC News, Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith has now claimed that he has obtained evidence showing that disgraced former US President Donald Trump intentionally misled and essentially blatantly lied to his own legal team with regard to his possession of highly-classified, top-secret government documents stashed away at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort turned post-White House personal home following the end of his tumultuous presidency.
Katherine Faulders, Alexander Mallin, and Lucien Bruggeman with ABC reported on the explosive development:
Prosecutors in the special counsel’s office have presented compelling preliminary evidence that former President Donald Trump knowingly and deliberately misled his own attorneys about his retention of classified materials after leaving office, a former top federal judge wrote Friday in a sealed filing, according to sources who described its contents to ABC News. U.S. Judge Beryl Howell, who on Friday stepped down as the D.C. district court’s chief judge, wrote last week that prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith’s office had made a ‘prima facie showing that the former president had committed criminal violations,’ according to the sources, and that attorney-client privileges invoked by two of his lawyers could therefore be pierced.”
“In her sealed filing, Howell ordered that Evan Corcoran, an attorney for Trump, should comply with a grand jury subpoena for testimony on six separate lines of inquiry over which he had previously asserted attorney-client privilege,” ABC’s report goes on to confirm. “Sources added that Howell also ordered Corcoran to hand over a number of records tied to what Howell described as Trump’s alleged ‘criminal scheme,’ echoing prosecutors. Those records include handwritten notes, invoices, and transcriptions of personal audio recordings.”
As noted in their report, and as seen by any Americans watching as the scandal-ridden former president continues to vehemently deny any wrongdoing in this case. While he has admitted to “openly and transparently” taking classified government documents and stashing them at his Palm Beach estate, Trump continues to assert that he was well within his right to do so as a former US president.
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When reporters reached out to Trump’s inner circle on this bombshell development, one spokesperson for the ex-president angrily responded, “Shame on Fake News ABC for broadcasting ILLEGALLY LEAKED false allegations from a Never Trump, now former chief judge, against the Trump legal team.”
The Mar-a-Lago stolen document scandal is just one of many ongoing investigations into the former president that the DOJ recently delegated to Special Counsel Jack Smith, including the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s role in inciting the deadly January 6th Capitol attack and his overall efforts to overthrow a United States presidential election.
See the full report from ABC News here.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
