'Trump is not going to be able to escape' trap just left by Jack Smith: legal expert

Friday filings by both special counsel Jack Smith and former President Donald Trump's legal team might as well have been moving chess pieces on the board — with Smith playing for keeps.

Former prosecutor Charles Coleman, appearing on MSNBC's "The 11th Hour" with Stephanie Ruhle, set the stage for the lesser covered federal case the 45th president is facing in Florida that accuses him of dodging requests to hand over classified documents stowed away at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump's filing accuses the feds of overblowing the matter and that the materials in his possession that were collected when the FBI searched the premises really didn't need such a highly classified status in the first place.

"It is a very interesting legal strategy for them to employ at this point because what they are attempting to argue is 'No harm, no foul!'... they are going to set up a defense that says 'These documents were already highly classified in a way that they should not have been, and therefore, the fact that Donald Trump held onto them should not be something that results in him being convicted criminally.'"

Simultaneously, Smith's counter-document seeks to pinpoint the locations and track movements of Trump's underling and co-defendant, personal aide Walt Nauta.

It's here where Coleman believes Smith is outmaneuvering Trump.

If the documents are to be discounted down from their sensitive status, then why was there so much purported movement and effort to allegedly keep them hidden and in the possession of the former president?

Coleman said Smith's filing sought to "get information around cell phone data from the co-defendant in this case Walt Nauta, because when they are trying to do is basically say, 'Look, we are going to line up, where all of these documents were being moved, and hidden, and moved, and hidden while the government was trying to recover them —and that directly undercuts the notion that you believe that having them wasn't a big deal, that you are trying to assert that now that it wasn't.'"

Beyond the debate over substance inked on the files, Coleman maintains that the former president's alleged effort to keep them at all costs will dog him come the trial.

He said: "And that is a problem that Donald Trump is not going to be able to escape."

Watch the segment below or at this link.