Trump: Jack Smith Should Be Sanctioned or Censured After Latest Filing

The former president said the special counsel ‘shouldn’t be allowed to participate in this sham case.’

(Left) Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks in Washington, on Aug. 1, 2023. (Right) Former President Donald Trump attends his trial in New York State Supreme Court, on Dec. 7, 2023. Drew Angerer, David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump responded to special counsel Jack Smith’s criticism of a Florida judge in his classified documents case in a social media post on Thursday.

In a post on Truth Social, the former president said the special counsel should face sanctions after prosecutors urged Judge Aileen Cannon to reject arguments from President Trump’s lawyers that classified documents found at his estate in Florida should be deemed personal records under the Presidential Records Act. In the filing, Mr. Smith was critical of the judge’s jury instructions in the case.

“Deranged ‘Special’ Counsel Jack Smith, who has a long record of failure as a prosecutor, including a unanimous decision against him in the U.S. Supreme Court, should be sanctioned or censured for the way he is attacking a highly respected Judge, Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over his FAKE Documents Hoax case in Florida,” President Trump wrote on Thursday.

The former president said that Mr. Smith is “condescending” and “shouldn’t even be allowed to participate in this sham case, where I, unlike Crooked Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and all the rest, come under the Presidential Records Act.” He then maintained that he did nothing wrong and accused the Department of Justice of using a two-tiered system of justice.

Mr. Smith’s response to Judge Cannon could be considered unusually direct and called on her to change her jury instructions. Judge Cannon had asked the prosecutors and defense to guide potential jurors on how to consider the arguments regarding whether the former president could retain the materials under the Presidential Records Act.

Meanwhile, analysts in mainstream media outlets appeared to take Mr. Smith’s side, accusing Judge Cannon of not knowing the law and alleging that she was stalling the case on behalf of President Trump. Ty Cobb, a former White House lawyer who has become a critic of President Trump, claimed that an appeals court may move to remove the judge in the documents case.

The Smith team said President Trump’s arguments are based on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise,” adding that the Presidential Records Act “should not play any role at trial at all,” the special counsel wrote. “It would be pure fiction to suggest that highly classified documents created by members of the intelligence community and military and presented to the President of the United States during his term in office were ‘purely private.’”

New Trump Filing

Lawyers for the former president revealed that he kept classified documents at those two locations as well as his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida while he was in office, and also during the months before he was inaugurated in 2017.

“You may consider evidence that government officials discussed classified information with President Trump and provided classified briefings and documents to President Trump before and during his Presidency, including inside President Trump’s private offices and residences, such as at Bedminster, New Jersey, and Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as at Trump Tower in New York City,” they wrote to the judge this week, responding to Judge Cannon’s jury instructions.

President Trump, the GOP presumptive presidential nominee for 2024, is facing dozens of felony counts related to alleged mishandling of classified documents, according to Mr. Smith’s indictment.

Part of President Trump’s defense centers around how he personally designated presidential files as his personal items before he left the White House in early 2021. In Tuesday’s court filing, his attorneys said that jurors could be told that President Trump had the legal power as president to make those documents his personal belongings.

“President Trump acted as an ‘original classification authority’ while he was President of the United States” to declassify the records, the filing states, adding that it “means that all classification decisions during his term as President were based on his authority, and that he also had absolute and unreviewable authority to declassify documents and information.”

Judge Cannon has suggested that the May trial date in the case would be pushed back. She hasn’t yet set a new trial date.