Federal Judge Rejects Texas’s Attempt to Force Jack Smith’s Preservation of Records

Judge Kacsmaryk said federal law already requires records preservation and that Texas failed to show there’s a significant risk of Smith destroying records.

Special counsel Jack Smith at the Justice Department in Washington on June 9, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

A federal judge in Texas has rejected the state’s attempt to prevent special counsel Jack Smith from destroying records related to his prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued earlier this month, claiming that “Jack Smith’s team has conducted itself in multiple ways that suggest it cannot be blindly trusted to preserve, and eventually produce, all of its records.”