In a startling turn of events, Special Counsel Jack Smith acknowledged on Friday that the FBI mishandled the organization of classified documents seized from former President Donald Trump. This admission comes amid the heated legal battle involving Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta.
Nauta, a former White House valet who continued to serve Trump at Mar-a-Lago, faces charges alongside the former president for mishandling sensitive documents. The controversy intensified after Nauta’s lawyer argued in a May 1st filing that discrepancies in the order of documents in the seized boxes complicated their defense preparations.
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Smith’s response to Nauta’s motion to extend disclosure deadlines revealed that the FBI had indeed rearranged documents within the boxes after seizing them from Trump’s estate. This contradicts previous Department of Justice (DOJ) assurances that the documents’ original arrangement was preserved. According to court documents, “The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court.”
This misstep by the FBI involved substituting classified documents with placeholders, initially marked by color-coded sheets meant to indicate classification level. However, it was later clarified that these were merely ‘slip sheets’ used to maintain an index of the documents. As the situation escalated, the FBI apparently exhausted its supply of official cover sheets, resorting to using blank sheets with handwritten classification notes.
