FBI turned off cameras ahead of Mar-a-Lago raid, admits to adding cover sheets to documents before taking photographs for evidence

Biden admin special counsel Jack Smith on Monday filed a motion urging the judge in the Mar-a-Lago documents case to throw out Trump’s motion to dismiss the case based on "spoliation of evidence in violation of due process." The Trump motion from early June alleged that the FBI, during its 2022 raid of Trump’s Palm Peach estate, destroyed "important exculpatory evidence relating to the locations of the allegedly classified documents at issue."

The filing from Smith stated that during the execution of the search warrant, "At approximately 9:55 am, the CCTV servers were turned off to prevent recording, at the request of the FBI, out of concern for agent safety." Independent journalist Julie Kelly, who has done extensive reporting on the cases against Trump and J6 defendants, noted the section on X. "At approximately 10:20 am, recording resumed, at the direction of Trump attorneys."

The section continued on to state that during the time recording was paused, "the cameras continued to display a live feed, and some Trump Organization personnel who had access to the network feed monitored it live." The filing noted that before the cameras ceased recording, DOJ attorney Bratt tried once to reach a Trump attorney over the phone unsuccessfully, and successfully did so on the second call. The filing also noted that the search was initiated at around 10:33 am.

Another section stated that a team of agents and Evidence Response Team (ERT) members set up a workstation outside of the storage room to review the boxes pulled. 

"If a team member located a document bearing classified markings that was subject to seizure, they removed the document, segregated it, recorded the box in which it was found, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet (the 'initial placeholder sheet') where the classified document was removed," Smith wrote. "They used preprinted classified cover sheets for the initial placeholder sheets until they ran out of them, having not anticipated finding so many classified documents."

"At that point, the team began using blank sheets of paper with handwritten annotations to identify the document. The information generally included the document title, classification level, a description of the subject matter, document identification numbers, and/or fates in the document."

The filing later added, "As part of the processing of seized documents marked classified, ERT photographed the documents (with appropriate cover sheets added by FBI personnel) next to the box in which they were located."

In the search of Trump’s office, agents discovered, among things like newspaper clippings, magazines, and empty folders in a blue box, "loose cover sheets for classified information, as well as documents marked classified." An FBI agent "found no potentially privileged materials in the box," but found "documents marked classified." The ERT photographer took photos of the blue box with the cover off.

After the FBI agent’s review, "two Case Team agents reviewed the box and found numerous documents with classification markings, some of which had classification cover sheets already attached, as well as loose classification cover sheets. The Case Team agents seized the documents marked classified (as well as any cover sheets already attached) and segregated them. As they extracted the seized documents, they inserted placeholder sheets where they found them."

The filing came after Trump’s team, in early June, filed a motion asking for the case to be dismissed.

"The prosecution team destroyed exculpatory evidence supporting one of the most basic defenses available to President Trump in response to the politically motivated charges in this case. The Special Counsel’s Office has wrongfully alleged that President Trump was aware of the contents of boxes in August 2022, where those boxes were packed by others in the White House and moved to Florida in January 2021. The fact that the allegedly classified documents were buried in boxes and comingled with President Trump’s personal effects from his first term in office strongly supported the defense argument that he lacked knowledge and culpable criminal intent with respect to the documents at issue. Any proximity between allegedly classified documents and other dated materials from years before the move, such as letters and newspapers, would have further strengthened this argument."

"The prosecution team’s instructions to agents who executed the raid essentially acknowledged these propositions, and directed the agents to take care to document the location of both seized items and potentially privileged materials. However, the agents disregarded those instructions. The government was more interested in staging—and leaking—manipulated photographs to the press than preserving key exculpatory evidence that has now been lost forever."

Trump’s attorneys stated that agents "did not maintain the order of the documents, and they did not take photographs that would have served as alternative evidence of the documents’ sequence in each box."

The filing noted that Filter Team members, who did the first search of the estate, were ordered to document and photograph the location of where classified documents were found, but "the Filter Team made little if any effort to document the location of seized items within a box or to maintain the order of documents within each box that they searched."

Trump previously called for the arrest of Smith after the special counsel admitted that evidence was tampered with in the case. In a post from Trump on Truth Social upon the release of court documents from Smith, the former president posted, "ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!"