In a late Friday filing, special counsel Jack Smith brutally shot down a claim made by Donald Trump and his lawyers that the Department of Justice is hiding evidence that the former president received a special security clearance that would have allowed him to keep secret documents belonging to the government.
As part of the ongoing attempts by the former president to delay the obstruction of justice trial the DOJ is struggling to begin due to foot-dragging by Judge Aileen Cannon, Trump and his legal team have asserted the government needs to find and turn over more evidence about his level of clearance as part of discovery.
According to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, Smith made a point of shooting down the claim in no uncertain terms in his Friday filing.
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As Joyce wrote on her Substack platform, "One particularly interesting part of the government’s response related to a suggestion in Trump’s motion that he had some form of security clearance issued by the Department of Energy that continued after he left the White House."
"Smith eviscerates that claim in response to Trump’s effort to force the government to search for more evidence that such a clearance existed," she explained before adding, "Trump argued that the government had an obligation to search 'Scattered Castles,' a database of security clearances maintained by the intelligence community, as well as a similar one maintained by the Department of Defense. But Smith pointed out that he had already produced a search in Scattered Castles, 'which yielded no past or present security clearances for Trump.' Same result in the Department of Defense system."
Vance notes that Trump and his team also demanded "discovery about a special 'Q clearance' he held through the Department of Energy," and that Smith responded by informing the the court "he had already produced a memo to Trump that showed his Q clearance, granted at the start of his presidency, was terminated shortly after it ended."
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