It was a photo that instantly became one of the most infamous in presidential campaign history: The FBI’s snapshot of “Top Secret” documents seized in its unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump’s office at Mar-a-Lago.
The Mar-a-Lago classified documents photo instantly became a media sensation and kicked off a wave of political prosecutions of the former president.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has become the tip of the spear for the Biden administration’s election interference campaign against his campaign rival, finally admitted in a filing before Judge Aileen Cannon that the photo was effectively staged.
Justice reporter Julie Kelly, in a lengthy thread, explained how it is now a documented fact that the so-called Department of Justice staged the photo effectively as a campaign ad against the former president.
This is how DOJ in August 2022 described the files in
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) May 4, 2024
a filing to Judge Cannon with accompanying photo that went viral to make it appear that this was the original form of the documents seized by FBI.
This does not appear to be the truth–at all. It instead appears that the… pic.twitter.com/yGAgYJMZEt
“Remember the photo of ‘classified docs’ strewn on the floor with scary looking cover sheets to depict the classification level of various papers?” Kelly asked. “It appears those cover sheets, or slip sheets, were produced and used by the FBI after the raid.”
Kelly deduced that those cover sheets are not the standard for such classified documents for a president’s usage.
“The cover sheets do not represent the format in which the records were found–an intentional misrepresentation in the court docket for special master lawsuit and by the media,” Kelly remarked.
“Here is how Nauta’s attorney described what we now know is the FBI’s use of ‘slip sheets’ to replace alleged classified papers. Look familiar?” she added.
“Jack Smith finally admitted yesterday the FBI used those sheets as placeholders (I mean, you can’t really say ‘props’ to help stage a ‘stunt’) in his filing last night. Then laughably claimed FBI found so many classified records they ran out of stunt covers/slip sheets,” she said.
This is the critical admission in the court filing.
Jack Smith finally admitted yesterday the FBI used those sheets as placeholders (I mean, you can't really say "props" to help stage a "stunt") in his filing last night.
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) May 4, 2024
Then laughably claimed FBI found so many classified records they ran out of stunt covers/slip sheets. pic.twitter.com/nm4BRZqmhv
“If a box did not contain potentially privileged documents, the filter team provided the box to the investigative team for on-site review, and if the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet,” the court filing states.
“The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized,” the filing adds.
This is new information that reveals that the infamous spread of “classified” documents was presented to the media in misleading fashion.
As previously reported, there is circumstantial evidence and reporting to suggest that the Mar-a-Lago raid was a “fishing expedition” to seize potentially damning “Crossfire Hurricane” documents.
As CNN reported in December 2023:
A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said.
In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.
The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN.
At the same time as the Mar-a-Lago raid, President Joe Biden was covering up his own classified documents scandal, which had only became public knowledge until after the 2022 midterm elections.
On Thursday, President Trump has filed a motion for dismissal in the classified documents case based on “selective and vindictive prosecution.”
“With one exception there is NO RECORD of the Department of Justice prosecuting a former president or vice president for mishandling classified documents from his own administration. The exception is President Trump,” the filing argues.
“The basis is his politics and status as President Biden’s chief political rival. Thus, this case reflects the type of selective and vindictive prosecution that cannot be tolerated.”
“Accordingly, further discovery and a hearing are necessary, and the Superceding Indictment must be dismissed,” the motion added.
Donald Trump’s legal team brought up similar cases that went unprosecuted.
“Hillary Clinton and her colleagues deleted 31,830 emails and destroyed data on numerous electronic devices, including after a congressional protective order. Comey hid from the FBI that he had used a private scanner and and his personal email account to transmit at least two classified documents to his personal attorney. Berger stole documents from NARA and cut three of them ‘into small pieces,’ which resulted in NARA having informal ‘Sandy Berger’ rules.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence was also found to have mishandled classified documents, which were discovered at his home in Indiana, but he was not prosecuted.
Special Counsel Hur’s report on President Biden’s classified documents scandal found that “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
Biden was never prosecuted, due to Hur’s subjective belief that no jury would find him guilty since he appears to be “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The director of the National Archive’s Information Security Oversight Office told the House Intelligence Committee in March 2023 that NARA has found boxes of classified information in unclassified containers from every administration since the Reagan Administration.
Donald Trump is the only one of the alleged offenders to be prosecuted, despite being a president with ultimate declassification authority and the classified-marked documents being found at his officially designated White House office at Mar-a-Lago.
