Prosecutors In Classified Files Case Say Trump Team's Version Of Events 'Inaccurate And Distorted'

Prosecutors in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump have told a judge that defense lawyers had painted an “inaccurate and distorted picture of events."

WASHINGTON (AP) — Prosecutors in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump told a judge Friday that defense lawyers had painted an “inaccurate and distorted picture of events” and had unfairly sought to “cast a cloud of suspicion” over government officials who were simply trying to do their jobs.

The comments came in a court filing responding to a Trump team request from last month that sought to force prosecutors to turn over a trove of information that defense lawyers believe is relevant to the case.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team said in Friday’s filing that the defense was creating a false narrative about how the investigation began and was trying to “cast a cloud of suspicion over responsible actions by government officials diligently doing their jobs.”

“The defendants’ insinuations have scant factual or legal relevance to their discovery requests, but they should not stand uncorrected,” the prosecution motion states.

“Put simply,” the prosecutors added, “the Government here confronted an extraordinary situation: a former President engaging in calculated and persistent obstruction of the collection of Presidential records, which, as a matter of law, belong to the United States for the benefit of history and posterity, and, as a matter of fact, here included a trove of highly classified documents containing some of the nation’s most sensitive information. The law required that those documents be collected.”