OPINION:
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon went on an unsealing binge last week in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump. Unlike a certain Manhattan magistrate, her honor’s first priority has been ensuring the public is aware of what government lawyers have been doing behind the scenes in the public’s name.
That is creating headaches for the Department of Justice, which accuses the former president of retaining classified work documents. The items in dispute include mementos such as a personal letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Under the Presidential Records Act, chief executives are entitled to keep personal records.
Nearly every president has saved papers this way — including items marked classified. President Biden kept his top-secret stash in a cardboard box in the garage next to his Corvette. But under Attorney General Merrick Garland, DOJ’s motto has become “It’s only a crime when Republicans do it.”
Aside from this selective prosecution, special counsel Jack Smith has been reckless with the material seized in the raid of Mr. Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022. “The filter team took care to ensure that no documents were moved from one box to another, but it was not focused on maintaining the sequence of documents within each box,” said Mr. Smith’s top lieutenant, Jay Bratt.
An “outside vendor” was called in to scan the documents, but nobody seems to have been watching what it was doing, as “there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” Mr. Bratt added, “The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court.”
White House records also show Mr. Bratt met in person with high-level West Wing staff in 2021 as Mr. Biden’s team was plotting with the National Archives and DOJ to bring the documents charge against the likely GOP nominee. This raises serious questions since a special counsel is supposed to be above political influence.
It’s even harder to explain how Nathan Wade, the disgraced special counsel who prosecuted Mr. Trump in Georgia on behalf of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, spent eight hours in a conference with the White House counsel’s office in 2022. Most local lawyers don’t get advice from the president’s legal team when they need help.
Real Clear Investigations’ Julie Kelly raised the question of whether the FBI staged the famous photo of classified document cover sheets scattered across the floor in Mr. Trump’s residence. The disclosures appear to suggest the colorful folders marked “Top Secret” were put there by G-men. “The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose,” Mr. Bratt told Judge Cannon, and those sheets are what gave the photo dramatic impact.
None of these important issues would have come to light if not for Judge Cannon’s insistence on transparency. On Monday, she put the case on hold while she considers what to do. Dropping this mess entirely seems an appropriate response.
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