Referring in a new filing to the recent bombshell report by Special Counsel Robert Hur that failed to charge President Joe Biden with any crimes related to the retaining of classified documents, Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s team portrays their federal classified documents case against former President Donald Trump as “starkly different.”
Unlike Biden, Smith contends, Trump is “alleged to have engaged in extensive and repeated efforts to obstruct justice and thwart the return of documents bearing classification markings.”
Further calling out the Trump defense’s tactic of falsely equating Biden’s document retention with Trump’s, Smith and assistant special counsel David Harbach quote the Hur report, which claimed “several material distinctions between Mr. Trump’s case and Mr. Biden’s are clear.”
The prosecution asserts, with the Hur report as backing, that the Biden case is not a valid comparator and that no comparator has been presented that would justify the defense’s argument.
“The defendants have not identified anyone,” the prosecution writes, “who has engaged in a remotely similar suite of willful and deceitful criminal conduct and not been prosecuted.” In other words, anyone doing anything “remotely” like what Trump did has historically always faced prosecution. And Smith additionally contends that Trump’s malfeasance excedes all precedents.
JUST IN: Jack Smith cites the Hur Report to argue that Trump’s handling of classified docs was significantly more aggravated/willful than Joe Biden’s. https://t.co/SQHqmWZKWd pic.twitter.com/QoWm7jmMVf
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 26, 2024
The retention of classified documents by a public official is not as rare as the much publicized cases concerning Trump and Biden may make it seem. Many cases have resulted, as the prosecution contends, in a prosecution.
Former Clinton administration National Security Advisor Samuel Berger was prosecuted and pleaded guilty in 2005 to removal and concealment of classified docs from the National Archives, a plea announced by then Assistant AG Christopher Wray, who now heads the FBI.
In 2015 General David Petraeus, the former CIA director, was prosecuted and pleaded guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, for which he served two years probation and paid $100,000 fine.
Defense Department employees, NSA employees, FBI, CIA and military personnel have all been prosecuted in the last two decades for retention of classified documents.
NSA contractor Harold Martin was sentenced to nine years in federal prison in 2016; former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee pleaded guilty to unlawful retention of national defense information in 2018; DOD worker Asia Janay Lavarello pleaded guilty in 2021 to removing and retaining classified documents.