Former President Donald Trump recently called for the arrest of Special Counsel Jack Smith after Smith admitted in a court filing that the FBI had altered the arrangement of classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. In a Truth Social post, Trump declared, “ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!” This statement came after Smith’s response to Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta’s, motion to extend a disclosure deadline in the classified documents case.
Walt Nauta, a former White House employee who worked for Trump and served as a personal staffer at Mar-a-Lago, was indicted alongside Trump. In a recent court filing, Nauta’s attorney claimed that the placement of items in the seized boxes had changed, complicating the cross-referencing of classified and unclassified materials during discovery. Smith, in his response, acknowledged that the FBI had moved the classified documents after seizing them, contradicting the Department of Justice’s earlier assurances that the documents remained in their original order.
A footnote in Smith’s motion revealed that the FBI had replaced classified documents with slip sheets, which were used to maintain placeholders for the original documents. The admission raised questions about the integrity of the evidence and the DOJ’s previous claims that the boxes had been kept intact. In April 2024, the DOJ stated that only classified documents had been removed from the boxes, with placeholders left in their place, suggesting that the original structure was maintained. However, Smith’s recent acknowledgment indicates that this was not entirely true.
