Donald Trump Jr. has accused Jack Smith, the special counsel at the head of two different criminal cases against his father, of “tampered” with evidence in the trial revolving around classified documents.
On the social media platform X, Trump Jr. accused Smith of mishandling some classified materials after his office admitted to the judge in the case, Aileen Cannon, that some of the boxes FBI agents seized as part of their raid on the Mar-a-Lago complex back in August of 2022 aren’t in their “original form” any longer.
Smith acknowledged in recent filings that in some of the boxes, the order of the items is “not the same” as it was in the digital scans of those materials. According to Smith’s team, the evidence could be in a different order due to things shifting around in the boxes as they’re being carried.
Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has already pleaded not guilty to all 40 of the federal charges that have been levied against him in the case. He has also accused Smith of “blatant evidence tampering” after the filings were made, going as far as calling for the special counsel to be arrested.
The former president’s son has basically now jumped on board with criticism that aligns with his father’s. On X, Trump Jr. shared a clip of his “Triggered” online show that featured an interview with journalist Julie Kelly.
As Trump Jr. wrote:
“So, as it turns out, Jack Smith and his team tampered with evidence. Or to put it another way: Mishandled classified materials. Whatever the left accuses everyone else of doing is exactly what they’re doing themselves!!!”
In that clip, Trump Jr. once again suggested the case against his father is only being motivated by politics. As he said in the clip:
“If this was Trump doing it to Biden or Obama before him [MSNBC host] Rachel Maddow would be talking about this thing 24/7, 365 for 15 years. It would be the only talking point of the left. They’d run elections around it. … It’s not like it’s one thing that’s an error. It’s just one after the other after the other, and it’s like, well, if they get away with one, then it’s just a snowball effect.”
Smith’s office didn’t respond to email requests for comment about the situation by Newsweek.
The comments that Trump Jr. made happened before the judge pushed back the start of the trial indefinitely. That move makes it increasingly likely that Trump won’t have to appear before a jury in Florida before the presidential election is held in November.
On Tuesday, Cannon issued a court filing that said with so many other legal deadlines and issues still needing to be resolved, she can’t yet confirm when the trial will start. It was originally set to begin on May 20, but Cannon has for a while now been expected to postpone it.
