Special Counsel Jack Smith has hinted that prosecutors are aware of the motivation behind former President Donald Trump’s failure to surrender a collection of classified documents before departing the White House for Mar-a-Lago, according to a Tuesday column in The Washington Post.
A government motion filed in court on Monday stated, “That the classified materials at issue in this case were taken from the White House and retained at Mar-a-Lago is not in dispute; what is in dispute is how that occurred, why it occurred, what Trump knew, and what Trump intended in retaining them — all issues that the Government will prove at trial primarily with unclassified evidence.”
The government appears not only poised to substantiate the circumstances leading to the accumulation of documents but also to shed light on “what Trump knew, and intended” in keeping these sensitive materials subsequent to his departure from office following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election to then President-Elect Joe Biden.
The government seems set not only to establish the details surrounding the document accumulation but also to shed light on “what Trump knew, and intended” when retaining these sensitive materials after his exit from office post his defeat in the 2020 presidential election to President-Elect Joe Biden.
Washington Post columnist Aaron Blake promptly noted Smith’s efforts in the filed motion to publicly reveal Trump’s intent for the upcoming trial.
“Indeed, establishing a motive would seem to drive home the intention of Trump’s actions and combat any arguments that this was all a misunderstanding — or that Trump somehow didn’t know what he had (which the government has taken care to undermine),” wrote Blake.
“In that case, Smith need not necessarily prove that Trump knew that his claims of massive voter fraud were false to demonstrate that Trump broke the law in trying to overturn the election. But it, too, would be helpful, and Smith’s office has made it abundantly clear that it intends to prove it, devoting 20 out of 45 pages from the indictment to that point.”
