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Trump admin shredding ‘essential’ USAID docs: Unions

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 01:00:34 +0000

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the East Room at the White House Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025, in Washington (Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP).

The Trump administration is shredding and burning “classified” employee documents at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with personnel info that would be “essential” to rehiring unlawfully fired federal workers, according to labor groups suing the president, should it be required as a result of their litigation.

“Plaintiffs file this emergency motion for temporary restraining order to stop Defendants’ imminent and ongoing destruction of evidence,” the groups said in a Tuesday filing.

“Defendants are, as this motion is being filed, destroying documents with potential pertinence to this litigation,” the coalition alleged. “Plaintiffs will suffer immediate, irreparable injury should the agency continue to destroy records.”

Last month, the plaintiffs — two government employees unions led by the American Foreign Service Association, the exclusive representative for the U.S. Foreign Service — filed a lawsuit accusing Trump and agency heads of “unlawful actions” that “exceed presidential authority and usurp legislative authority conferred upon Congress by the Constitution, in violation of the separation of powers.”

On Feb. 7, the same day the suit was filed, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols granted a “limited” temporary restraining order barring the government from placing USAID employees on administrative leave and performing expedited evacuations of such employees from their overseas posts. The order rejected a request to block a 90-day pause on “foreign assistance funding.”

On Feb. 21, Nichols dissolved the TRO and denied a request from the labor groups for a preliminary injunction. Things remained unchanged up until this week when the plaintiffs motioned to stop the shredding and burning of “critical” employee data after hearing about it in an email sent out by USAID’s acting executive secretary, Erica Carr, who allegedly told officials: “Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break.”

In their motion, the unions suing Trump said Carr’s email claimed the USAID was “clearing [its] classified safes and personnel documents” from the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., starting at 9:30 am Tuesday. The email allegedly directed USAID staff to “shred as many documents” as possible and to use “burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break.” An alleged screenshot of Carr’s email was included in the Tuesday motion.

“This directive suggests a rapid destruction of agency records on a large scale that could not plausibly involve a reasoned assessment of the records retention obligations for the relevant documents under the FRA or in relation to this ongoing litigation,” the motion said. “The ‘classified’ and ‘personnel’ documents that are currently being shredded contain information that will be critical to the continued operation or — as the agency continues to be dismantled — the reconstitution of the agency. For example, if the agency is required as a result of this litigation to rehire terminated employees, personnel records that identify USAID employees and contain personal contact information will be essential to rehiring those employees.”

The motion alleged that union lawyers sought information from the Trump administration and Justice Department as to whether the alleged document destruction efforts were ongoing. The DOJ told them it was investigating the matter.

“Plaintiffs, however, cannot wait,” the motion said. “Immediate injunctive relief is necessary to halt this destruction.”

Nichols has yet to respond to the motion, with no orders being filed by the judge as of 7:30 p.m. EST Tuesday.

The USAID case comes as organizations that entered into contracts or received grants from the State Department and USAID have been suing the Trump administration over an executive order by the president that required a blanket freeze of all foreign aid funding. The coalition of foreign aid groups has argued that it was an unconstitutional exercise of presidential power “in contravention of congressional will” — as well as an “arbitrary and capricious agency action” — that will lead to starvation and the deaths of many.

The Trump administration was ordered Monday to cough up nearly $2 billion in foreign aid that it owes for existing contracts and grants authorized by Congress, with a federal judge ruling that it was unconstitutional of Trump to “unlawfully impound funds” earlier this year through his USAID freeze.

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FBI to release docs on Trump allegedly ‘flushing’ records

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 06:17:38 +0000

President Donald Trump listens during a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).

Despite the federal government dismissing the criminal cases against Donald Trump after his 2024 election victory, the world may soon find out more about the former and current president’s alleged mishandling of confidential documents — including whether he “flushed some presidential records down the toilet” during his first stint in office.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday ordered the FBI to release records the bureau had previously withheld in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by investigative journalist Jason Leopold.

Ironically, it was Trump’s victory over Joe Biden in conjunction with the U.S. Supreme Court’s sweeping ruling granting a sitting president immunity from prosecution for official acts — litigation instigated by Trump — that formed the basis for the court’s holding in the FOIA case.

In a 26-page order, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell reasoned that because Trump (and the co-defendants he pardoned after taking office) were no longer in danger of being prosecuted for the alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, the federal government could no longer prevent the disclosure of the documents requested by Leopold.

“Despite filling nearly 400 pages, including exhibits and declarations, briefing in this case fell behind developments in the real world that carry fatal consequences for the agency’s proffered rationale for withholding records responsive to a request under the Freedom of Information Act,” Howell wrote. “Absent correct application of an exemption, disclosure is required to allow the American people to learn about actions of government officials that the officials themselves may not otherwise want to be made public. As the D.C. Circuit has long made clear: ‘One basic general assumption of the FOIA is that, in many important public matters, it is for the public to know and then to judge.””

The request stemmed from a February 2022 report that during his first term in office, Trump had flushed presidential records down the White House toilet. Soon after came a letter from the Archivist of the United States to Congress stating that as he lost the 2020 election, Trump had “brought presidential records, some of which were classified, to his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago.”

Leopold subsequently requested information on two categories of documents: “Presidential Records removed from the Trump White House that were stored at Mar-a-Lago” and “Presidential Records from the Trump White House that were destroyed and Presidential Records from the Trump White House that were allegedly flushed down the toilet.”

The requests were denied with the FBI basing its response to the former on a FOIA exemption allowing the government to withhold investigative records that could be “reasonably expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” while the latter was denied with the bureau refusing to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records — colloquially known as a Glomar response — because no investigation into the alleged flushing of records had been “officially acknowledged.”

But, according to Howell, the FBI could no longer rely on its justifications for refusing to provide the requested records.

Howell wrote:

Given the current circumstances and legal landscape — including that President Trump now enjoys absolute and presumptive immunity from criminal liability, the government has dismissed criminal charges against President Trump and has dropped its challenge to the district court’s order dismissing the criminal charges against his co-defendants for alleged mishandling of classified presidential records, and no pending or even contemplated criminal enforcement action within the applicable statute of limitations on the topics of responsive records is at all likely — the FBI’s reliance on Exemption 7(A) and a Glomar response predicated on this exemption, is neither a proper nor a sufficient response to the FOIA request at issue

Howell’s order also emphasized that all of the prosecutors involved in the criminal investigations into Trump had been “summarily fired” by Trump once he took office before taking aim at the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, which she said shielded Trump from being held criminally responsible, but not from allowing the American people from knowing “what the government is up to.”

“Of course, while the Supreme Court has provided a protective and presumptive immunity cloak for a president’s conduct, that cloak is not so large to extend to those who aid, abet and execute criminal acts on behalf of a criminally immune president,” she wrote in a footnote. “The excuse offered after World War II by enablers of the fascist Nazi regime of ‘just following orders’ has long been rejected in this country’s jurisprudence.”

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CNN’s parent company must turn over docs in defamation case

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:01:13 +0000

Inset: Zachary Young. Main: A court exhibit highlights the chyron from the Nov. 11, 2021, CNN segment at issue (court documents).

CNN‘s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery must conduct a financial deep dive and then hand relevant information over to a Navy veteran who is suing the network in a high-profile, and potentially high-dollar, defamation case, a judge in Delaware ruled on Friday.

In the event the requested documents do not exist, however, the company must issue a “sworn declaration” to that effect, Delaware Superior Court Judge Lynne M. Parker ruled, Fox News reports.

The ruling may come as something of a double-edged victory for Zachary Young, who is suing CNN over a 2021 segment that aired on “The Lead with Jake Tapper.” In the lawsuit, Young claims the cable news channel falsely painted him as an “illegal profiteer” exploiting “desperate Afghans” with “exorbitant” extraction fees amid the fallout of President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Young and his attorneys have been trying to get their hands on certain financial documents they claim are relevant to the case for some time but complain that CNN has not been forthcoming with such discovery.

The underlying lawsuit was filed in Bay County, Florida, where 14th Judicial Circuit Court Judge William Henry is overseeing the case.

Young, a U.S. citizen who lives in Austria and is the president of Florida-based corporation Nemex Enterprises, is suing for CNN defamation per se, defamation by implication, group libel and trade libel, claiming that his efforts to save lives in Afghanistan as a security consultant were distorted by “lies published for sensationalism.”

The segment at issue, which aired on Nov. 11, 2021, and featured correspondent Alex Marquardt’s reporting on Tapper’s show, displayed a photo of Young over chyrons that read: “AFGHANS TRYING TO FLEE TALIBAN FACE BLACK MARKETS, EXORBITANT FEES, NO GUARANTEE OF SAFETY OR SUCCESS” and “AFGHANS AND ACTIVISTS REPORT DEMANDS OF $10K-$14K FOR ATTEMPTS TO GET FAMILY MEMBERS OUT OF COUNTRY.”

CNN has since tried and failed to prevent Young from amending his lawsuit to request likely costly punitive damages, failed to keep Tapper from being deposed, failed to prevent the release of embarrassing internal messages, and, relevant now, failed to keep the trial court from signing off on an “expansive” financial spelunking trip.

But the multinational mass media conglomerate, for their part, says the documents Young wants simply do not exist.

“If it doesn’t exist, we can’t be compelled to produce anything,” Jennifer Ying, representing Warner Bros. Discovery, told the judge in Delaware, according to a courtroom report by Fox News.

“We have told them twice now that such information does not exist,” Ying reportedly continued. “They have refused to accept that. We cannot create information that simply does not exist.”

Henry previously issued an order directing CNN to turn over the requested documents — but threw up his hands at the suggestion of directing the network to issue a sworn declaration attesting to the would-be non-existence of the financial statements in question.

The Florida court’s broad ruling, while helpful to the plaintiff, ultimately created a state of limbo in a fast-approaching trial.

Tired of waiting, the plaintiff’s team recently moved up the corporate organization chart — filing a request with the Delaware court because that is where Warner Bros. Discovery is incorporated.

“It’s simply inconceivable that Warner Bros. Discovery is incapable of providing cashflow and balance sheet information for its wholly owned subsidiary,” attorney Joe Delich told Parker. “Warner Bros. Discovery has produced some documents but has not produced any information about cashflow, or any kind of balance sheet information. We know that Warner Bros. Discovery has the ability to do this.”

On Friday, the parent company’s attorney shot back that the latest ask from Young was “premature” because the original subpoena return date had yet to lapse. Ying also complained that the subpoena lacked any mention of cash flow statements and balance sheets.

Parker aimed to cut through the confusion — unintentional or otherwise; essentially instructing both parties to get it together.

She told Young to issue a new, more specific subpoena that explicitly demands both cash flow statements and balance sheets.

“Well, CNN does not have to provide a sworn declaration, but Warner Bros. does,” the Delaware judge said. “You’re going to subpoena Warner Brothers requesting these two specific things, and they’re either going to produce documents or they’re going to give you a sworn declaration that it does not exist.”

The court instructed Young’s team to act fast.

“Issue the subpoena right away,” Parker continued. “They have 20 days from the date of issuance to respond.”

In the underlying lawsuit, Young says he “never advertised to, or took a single penny from, any Afghan, much less ‘exploited’ ‘desperate Afghans,”” that he “certainly never sold any services on a ‘black market,’” and that “[e]verything he did was legal.” But the CNN report “rendered” him “permanently unemployable in the career he has trained his whole life for” and, in turn, cost him millions of dollars.

The complaint includes an on-air correction and apology where CNN says they did not “mean to suggest” Young “participated in the black market,” despite the chyron under his photo on the segment.

The court docket in Florida currently shows two pre-trial hearings scheduled for Nov. 25 and 26. Trial is slated to begin Jan. 6.

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Husband strangled pregnant wife, made up shocking tale: Docs

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 14:50:16 +0000

Left: Lee Gilley (Harris County Sheriff’s Office). Right: Christa Bauer Gilley (Facebook).

A software consultant, husband, and father of two claimed he woke up one week ago to find that his wife, 9 weeks pregnant, took her own life by overdosing on drugs even though she was neither suicidal nor a drug user and even though the evidence indicated the victim was strangled to death, Texas authorities allege.

Lee Mongerson Gilley, 38, remains behind bars without bond in Harris County in a capital murder of multiple persons case following his jail booking on Friday, Oct. 11, four days after the suspected strangulation slaying of 38-year-old Christa Bauer Gilley at her Allston St. home in Houston.

Court documents obtained by Law&Crime show that prosecutors claim to have “good reason to believe” Lee Gilley on Oct. 7 “intentionally and knowingly cause[d]” Christa’s death by “applying pressure to [her] neck and upper back, and intentionally and knowingly caus[ing] the death of unborn child” as a result.

Suspect Gilley is a self-employed software consultant for the last 13 years and Houston homeowner for the last seven years, according to court documents.

Court documents noting that the capital murder defendant was denied bond said Gilley told emergency responders he and his wife had an argument before he went to bed and that when he woke up three hours later she was unresponsive and apparently overdosed to take her own life.

More Law&Crime coverage: Elementary school principal and daughter of a longtime federal bankruptcy judge found strangled to death in bed

But after Christa died a hospital, both the “hospital physician” and the medical examiner determined that the victim, 9 weeks pregnant, had “injuries consistent with strangulation.”

“D[efendant] admitted wife not suicidal and not a drug user,” documents said. “[O]nly two small children he and wife home, had been arguing.”

Christa “went to bed and 3 hours later [Lee] found her in that condition called 911 started CPR,” according to the defendant’s alleged version of events.

The couple married at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Charleston, S.C., in 2017, nearly a decade after they first met at a dance class while seniors at Clemson University, their alma mater.

“After going on one date and then going their separate ways, the two reconnected 8 years later in Boston for their second date. Talk about meant to be!” said a post on Charleston Weddings Magazine. “Lee flew from San Diego to Houston 11 months later where he surprised Christa with a proposal.”

A candlelight vigil in Christa’s memory is reportedly scheduled for Tuesday night in the Greater Heights neighborhood.

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Child feared mom would kill her after poisoning charge: Docs

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 22:17:10 +0000

Yue Yu faces charges after allegedly poisoning her husband’s tea with a “Drano-like” liquid, prosecutors said. (Mug shot from Irvine Police Department; screenshot of her in the kitchen courtesy of Steven G. Hittelman of the Hittelman Family Law Group)

The daughter of a California dermatologist facing charges for allegedly poisoning her husband’s tea with a “Drano-like” liquid told a school counselor she feared her mom would kill her if she didn’t lie about it in court, court documents say.

Dr. Yue “Emily” Yu’s 11-year-old daughter, appearing to be distressed and tearful, told her school counselor in a private session last November that she feared if she didn’t lie about what happened, she would make her mom angry, the therapist wrote in court documents.

When the therapist asked why, the girl said, “Because what if she does what she did to my dad to me?”

The counselor then asked, “Are you afraid that your mom would kill you?”

“Yes,” the girl replied, according to court documents.

The allegations surfaced as Yu and her husband, Dr. Jack Chen, are in the middle of a divorce and custody battle.

Yu’s lawyer, David Dworakowski, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Law&Crime. But in court documents, he and his co-counsel said Yu “categorically denies having any violative communications with the children, much less coaching them about facts related to her defense in the criminal matter.”

“Over the past year of Mother’s parenting time, there has not been a scintilla of evidence that Mother, or Grandmother, attempted improper communications with the children,” the document said. “Nothing extraordinary has been seen by the monitors. Additionally, the evidence is that the children enjoy the parenting time spent with Mother, and it is evident that a bond exists between the children and Mother.”

As Law&Crime previously reported, Chen alleged his wife tried to kill him by poisoning his hot lemonade with drain cleaner after he started noticing a chemical taste in the drink in March and April 2022.

His suspicions were raised after he was diagnosed with two stomach ulcers, gastritis, and inflammation of his esophagus. He put up a nanny cam in the kitchen, which caught her three times taking the drain cleaner from under the sink and pouring it into his drink, court documents said.

Yu was arrested after Chen reported the incidents to the Irvine Police Department on Aug. 4, 2022. She faces three felony counts of poisoning and one felony count of domestic battery with corporal injury, prosecutors said. Yu was released from jail after posting a $30,000 bond and faces a hearing in the criminal case in May.

Chen alleged years of verbal and physical abuse by Yu and her mother — the children’s grandmother — on their children and him, court documents said.

In court documents, the school therapist wrote that when the daughter came in to see her she described her mother using her phone to type lines for her. In one alleged instance about the drain cleaner used in the house, the daughter “acted out herself and her mom by changing voices,” the documents said.

The daughter said Yu would ask her, “and why did we have Drain-O in the house in the summer?”

“Because we had ants and dad wouldn’t buy ant traps,” the daughter was expected to say, court documents said.

Later, the therapist wrote, the daughter said her mother grabbed her by the arm and it hurt. She reported feeling scared to make her mom angry and didn’t know what to do about being asked to lie.

The daughter said when she lived at home with her mother, Yu would keep her up late and wake her up early to study for tests and practice piano.

She also reported her mother would sometimes unscrew the leg of a baby chair that mom would use to “beat” her, court documents said.

Her maternal grandmother told her and her younger brother to come over so she could hit them with the chair leg, documents said.

“If they ran grandma would chase them and beat them,” the documents said.

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Man sprayed officers with mace during Jan. 6 riots: Docs

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 02:18:16 +0000

Thomas Andrew Casselman pleaded guilty to a felony offense of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots. (Photos from court documents)

A man from South Carolina whose post-rioting online searches included, “What is the definition of a domestic terrorist,” admitted to assaulting officers during the Capitol breach by spraying them with “bear mace.”

Thomas Andrew Casselman, 30, entered his guilty plea to a felony offense of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers. He is set to be sentenced on July 18.

Casselman was among a crowd of rioters gathered on the West Plaza of the Capitol grounds that day for Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally.

In addition to searching domestic terrorist definitions online, he also sought out legal information such as “The statute of limitations for assault on a police officer,” “The statute of limitations for assault on a federal officer,” “assaulting a federal officer punishment,” and “How long does Verizon keep text messages” before the FBI arrested him on March 28, 2023.

Like many of the rioters, he came onto the FBI’s radar through social media after images were published online. He was designated on FBI BOLO #363-AFO as a white male with light brown facial hair wearing a dark gray cap, black face mask, American flag gaiter or scarf around the neck, black jacket, and backpack.

He was captured on camera spraying law enforcement officers with an orange-colored chemical irritant colloquially known as “bear spray” or “bear mace.” The substance is marketed and designed to be used against bears, not humans.

Officers reported being sprayed with it. In one interview, a Washington, D.C. Metropolitan police officer said rioters sprayed him multiple times with chemical agents, including “bear mace.” He wasn’t wearing a gas mask to help defeat the irritant, so the effects hurt him badly. He reported his lungs seized up, he experienced convulsions, and he could hardly breathe, court documents said.

Another DC cop said rioters sprayed him twice. He said the spraying he received in police academy training with oleoresin capsicum spray — or “OC spray” — was nothing compared to the bear spray he believed he was hit with on Jan. 6.

Tipsters who identified Casselman to the feds said he bragged about going to Washington, telling them he had been hit with tear gas while there, and shared photographs and videos from his time there that day.

One witness said Casselman had cut his hair and deleted his Facebook account after the events.

In an interview with FBI agents on Dec. 28, 2021, Casselman admitted to being in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. He said his father even bought him a train ticket.

He also told agents he had post-traumatic stress disorder from the riots and had deleted his photographs and social media accounts, adding, “I don’t know if that falls under destruction of evidence,” court documents said.

When an agent showed him a picture of FBI BOLO #363-AFO and asked if it was him, he declined to answer further questions without a lawyer present.

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Jack Smith says Trump should not get certain discovery docs

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 10:02:23 +0000

Left: Former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File). Right: Special counsel Jack Smith. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin). Inset: Judge Aileen M. Cannon (U.S. Senate).

Special counsel Jack Smith ridiculed a “conspiracy theory” recently advanced by former President Donald Trump about the genesis of the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in a Monday court filing.

Earlier this month, the 45th president filed a motion requesting “discovery and a hearing concerning selective and vindictive prosecution.” Trump’s attorneys argue that a separate special counsel’s decision not to indict President Joe Biden over his own retention of classified documents shows the Department of Justice is discriminating against their client and acting with “political animus.”

On Monday, in a filing stylized as a surreply, Smith also referenced special counsel Robert Hur’s decision not to indict Biden.

“They contend that the incumbent president has secretly directed this prosecution — using the Special Counsel as a ‘puppet’ or ‘stalking horse,”” the filing reads. “In order to retaliate against Trump for exercising his right to criticize him and run against him.”

To hear Trump tell it, such allegations necessitate the production of discovery that will help the defense claim that the entire prosecution is corrupt and the case should be dismissed.

Smith’s office says there isn’t anything like that to discover.

“[T]he sources on which they rely, even if taken at face value, undercut rather than support this conspiracy theory, as they repeatedly emphasize that the prosecutorial decisions made by the Department of Justice generally, and the Special Counsel specifically, have been made on the basis of the facts and the law, not political considerations,” the filing reads. “The defendants offer no evidence to the contrary, because there is no such evidence.”

And, the government argues, the defense is also confused about where the relevant alleged bias comes from in the first place.

“[T]he defendants’ baseless theory that the prosecutorial decisions in this case have been made by the incumbent president, communicating his direction via the news media, is inconsistent with their requests for discovery,” the filing goes on.

The latest discovery requests lodged by Trump following the decision not to charge Biden are a “fishing expedition” and should be denied by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, Smith’s office says.

“[T]he defendants have not, and cannot, satisfy the requirements for discovery on a claim of either selective or vindictive prosecution,” the government’s 12-page Monday filing argues.

In order to sustain a claim of selective prosecution, a criminal defendant has to show that someone “similarly situated” was not prosecuted — but could have been prosecuted because the evidence against the non-prosecuted person was the same or better than the prosecuted person making the selective prosecution claim.

And here, Smith says, the ex-president and his co-defendants, Waltine Nauta, Trump’s longtime butler, and Carlos De Oliveira, Mar-a-Lago’s property manager, have failed to identify any such person.

“[T]here has never been a case in American history in which a former official has engaged in conduct remotely similar to Trump’s,” the government’s filing argues. “He intentionally took possession of a vast trove of some of the nation’s most sensitive documents — documents so sensitive that they were presented to the President — and stored them in unsecured locations at his heavily trafficked social club.”

The filing then offers a thorough rundown of the allegations:

When the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) initially sought their return (before learning that they contained classified national defense information), Trump delayed, obfuscated, and dissembled. Faced with the possibility of legal action, he ostensibly agreed to comply with NARA’s requests but in fact engaged in additional deception, returning only a fraction of the documents in his possession while claiming that his production was complete. Then, when presented with a grand jury subpoena demanding the return of the remaining documents bearing classification markings, Trump attempted to enlist his own attorney in the corrupt endeavor, suggesting that he falsely tell the FBI and grand jury that Trump did not have any documents, and suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents rather than produce them to the government. Failing in his effort to corrupt the attorney, Trump enlisted his trusted body man, codefendant Waltine Nauta, in a scheme to deceive the attorney by moving boxes to conceal his (Trump’s) continued possession of classified documents. As a result, Trump, through his attorney, again returned only a portion of the classified documents in his possession while falsely claiming that his production was complete. The obstructive conduct even persisted from there. In June 2022, knowing that he had arranged for Nauta to move boxes to conceal them from Trump’s attorney, and knowing that the government had subpoenaed the security video footage that would reveal that surreptitious box movement, Trump, now joined by not only Nauta but also codefendant Carlos De Oliveira, attempted to have the information-technology manager at Mar-aLago delete the video footage that would show the movement of boxes.

“The defendants have not identified anyone who has engaged in a remotely similar suite of willful and deceitful criminal conduct and not been prosecuted,” assistant special counsel David Harbach writes in the filing. “Nor could they.”

Citing Biden as the defendants’ “primary comparator,” the government argues the cases are completely different.

“Trump, unlike Biden, is alleged to have engaged in extensive and repeated efforts to obstruct justice and thwart the return of documents bearing classification markings,” the filing goes on. “And the evidence concerning the two men’s intent — whether they knowingly possessed and willfully retained such documents — is also starkly different.”

Last week, Trump again lashed out at Smith — directly calling the prosecutor an arm of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.

Smith has yet to reply to that missive.

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Trump rages in filing after Biden classified docs decision

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 02:50:52 +0000

Left: Former President Donald Trump, center, sits at the defense table at New York Supreme Court, Dec. 7, 2023, in New York City. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, Pool, File) Right: Special counsel Jack Smith speaks about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Aug. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Former President Donald Trump issued a broadside attack against special counsel Jack Smith and the broader Biden administration in a late Friday motion filed in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

Stylized as a reply to the government’s response over extended discovery schedules requested by the defense, the 37-page brief obtained by Law&Crime aims at prosecutors and politicians alike. The focus of the filing is the Thursday special counsel report declining to criminally charge President Joe Biden despite finding he likely violated the law by retaining and sharing classified documents.

“Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report issued by Special Counsel Robert Hur, finding that President Biden has ‘willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,’ over the course of his decades-long career,” Trump’s reply brief reads. “President Biden will not be charged, and President Trump should not have been either.”

“Based on this evidence, the Defendants are entitled to discovery and a hearing concerning selective and vindictive prosecution, and they will ultimately demonstrate that the Superseding Indictment must be dismissed,” the filing reads.

Citing “ongoing discovery abuses” by the government, the 45th president and his co-defendants, Waltine Nauta, Trump’s longtime butler, and Carlos De Oliveira, Mar-a-Lago’s property manager, allege the decision not to charge Biden over his own unlawful retention of classified documents is “prima facie” evidence of a “selective and vindictive prosecution.”

More Law&Crime coverage: The Trump Docket: Victory appears likely at SCOTUS, but immunity is a much tougher hill to climb

The controversial decision not to charge Biden over what special counsel Robert Hur said he believed was, in fact, a violation of federal law, came down to several factors. One factor cited in the 388-page report is the belief that prosecutors simply would not be able to make their case because Biden would sell himself to a potential jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory” who did not know he was breaking the law. Hur also noted, in passages on multiple pages throughout the report, that the allegations against Trump are far worse.

“The Hur Report is the latest entry on a long list of similarly situated government officials not being charged with a crime in connection with allegations relating to the handling of classified information,” Trump’s motion continues. “There is also significant evidence that this prosecution is motivated by impermissible considerations concerning President Trump’s status as the leading candidate in the 2024 election and President Biden’s chief political rival. Dating back to April 2022, the Biden Administration has urged prosecutors to coopt the criminal justice system to try and accomplish what President Biden cannot do on the campaign trial [sic], defeat President Trump.”

While pushing for the indictment to be dismissed, the criticism leveled by Trump against Smith, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Biden and others comes in a motion that argues for more expansive discovery and more time to conduct such discovery. Prosecutors have been adamant that extended discovery deadlines are just an effort to stall and push the trial date past the 2024 election.

The argument advanced by Trump’s attorneys, which is also joined by Nauta’s and Oliveira’s attorneys in the motion, is that the non-charging decision over Biden’s retention of the documents shows not only selective and vindictive prosecution but also clear evidence of “political animus.”

Each of those theories, the motion notes, are akin to terms of art under federal law — and each has its own discovery standards.

In other words, because the U.S. Department of Justice did not charge Biden, the Mar-a-Lago co-defendants are entitled to increase the scope of their discovery requests substantially, the motion argues.

“In light of the decision not to prosecute President Biden for his ‘willful’ violation of the Espionage Act, the Special Counsel’s Office can no longer avoid discovery on a selective and vindictive prosecution theories,” the motion reads. “This discovery includes all materials within the possession of the prosecution team that ‘might corroborate’ President Trump’s motion to dismiss on behalf of the Defendants.”

The motion cites several pieces of case law to bolster their argument — while musing that most prior court decisions have dealt with whether discovery can be used during trial proceedings in instances where the state had provided such discovery.

More Law&Crime coverage: Jack Smith must immediately provide Trump and Mar-a-Lago co-defendants with sensitive document the government claims ‘risks disrupting’ an ongoing investigation

“[T]he defense seeks information and evidence demonstrating that participants in the investigation were biased against President Trump and motivated to reach false and inaccurate conclusions based on political animus,” the motion goes on. “Materiality is the standard, and it is a low bar. Relevance and admissibility are for another day — if this case survives that long.”

But, the motion also says, the government has not been complying with their already-in-place discovery demands.

“In discovery letters and motion papers, the Special Counsel’s Office has sought to avoid their discovery obligations by claiming that otherwise-discoverable materials are not in the possession of the prosecution team,” the motion continues. “In fact, other than by seeking to exclude the possessors of the evidence from the prosecution team’s scope, the Office largely declined to address the specific types of political-animus and bias evidence President Trump is seeking.”

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