Special counsel defends investigators’ handling of Mar-a-Lago documents kept in ‘haphazard manner’ by Trump

CNN —

Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith in a filing late Monday night pushed back on former President Donald Trump’s effort to toss the classified documents case against him over how materials found in boxes during the FBI’s 2022 Mar-a-Lago search were handled by investigators.

Prosecutors, with several never-before-seen images and a 30-page filing, detailed the search process and ridiculed Trump’s legal arguments.

“Trump personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most highly guarded secrets in cardboard boxes,” prosecutors wrote, “along with a collection of other personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency—newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others.”

The latest Trump bid to toss the case came after prosecutors acknowledged that some of the documents fell out of order within their individual boxes after they were seized by the government.

Trump’s attorneys have previously argued that because the order of contents in boxes was changed, it impacts their ability to build a defense around when certain classified material was placed in each box, given where it was inside Mar-a-Lago and what documents – including news articles – were beside it.

A photo of a box taken by a filter agent during the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago.

The new filing from Smith’s team goes into granular detail about how the search was conducted, the protocols FBI agents followed, and how certain documents were taken out of the boxes and by whom.

The prosecutors highlighted how investigators found boxes with their contents spilled on the floor, which they also illustrated with photos taken by investigators and