President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents is not even "remotely" similar to Donald Trump's "deceitful criminal conduct," special counsel Jack Smith said in a Monday brief.
Smith's team submitted the filing to challenge the former president's argument that he's being unfairly prosecuted by Biden-allied attorneys, Politico reports. In it, the prosecutors rebuked Trump's attempt to compare his conduct with the president's, whom special counsel Robert Hur chastised for retaining classified materials. Smith's team noted, however, that Hur's report also highlighted why only Trump is facing a bevy of criminal charges for his conduct.
“The defendants have not identified anyone who has engaged in a remotely similar suite of willful and deceitful criminal conduct and not been prosecuted. Nor could they,” assistant special counsel David Harbach wrote in the 12-page filing. “Trump, unlike Biden, is alleged to have engaged in extensive and repeated efforts to obstruct justice and thwart the return of documents bearing classification markings,” Harbach added. “And the evidence concerning the two men’s intent — whether they knowingly possessed and willfully retained such documents — is also starkly different.”
Hur in his report wrote that there are "several material distinctions" between Trump's case and Biden's.
"Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts,” the report said, adding that Trump rejected several chances to return the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
“According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it," Hur wrote. "In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.”
Trump faces 40 felony counts in Florida for storing a treasure trove of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence after leaving office and allegedly resisting government efforts to retrieve them. In Monday's brief, Harbach highlighted that the sensitivity and quantity of the records Trump retained far exceeded that of other instances of classified-record mishandling that have been resolved without an indictment, Politico noted. “There has never been a case in American history in which a former official has engaged in conduct remotely similar to Trump’s,” he wrote.
