“Incorrect and misleading allegations”: Jack Smith accuses Trump of lying to delay Mar-a-Lago trial

Special counsel Jack Smith in a new filing accused Donald Trump and his legal team of lying about the discovery record in an effort to delay the trial schedule in the former president’s classified documents case. In the filing, posted Thursday evening, the special counsel argues that an unclassified response and classified supplement Trump filed on Oct. 19 “made incorrect and misleading allegations about the discovery record in furtherance of his attempt to delay the pretrial litigation schedule and May 20, 2024 trial date.”

Smith went on to offer a correction of the misleading statements from the defense’s brief. “[A]s of October 6, the defense has had available to it nearly all unclassified and classified discovery collected by the Government to date, as set forth in prior filings cited below, and the Government understands that the defense SCIF has been approved to store all classified materials in this case, including the special measures documents,” the filing reads. “The Government has met and exceeded its discovery obligations to date and the discovery record provides no cause to delay these proceedings.”

Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who presides over the South Florida case, sided with Trump’s argument that the Justice Department did not give him “timely” access to classified evidence in an accredited facility for his review. Cannon, a relatively inexperienced federal judge and Trump appointee, has made a number of other decisions at various points in the case that legal experts have argued are highly sympathetic to the former president and suspicious in the context of the case against him.