Federal prosecutors on Monday released never-before-seen images of government documents recovered from former President Donald Trump's Florida home as they pushed back on his lawyers' effort to have the case thrown out.
The photographs show stacks of labeled boxes, classified documents and other papers kept with newspapers, clothes and presidential memorabilia.
'Trump personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most highly guarded secrets in cardboard boxes along with a collection of other personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency—newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others,' wrote prosecutors led by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Trump is charged with 40 felony counts, including illegally retaining documents and trying to obstruct government attempts to recover them.
He has pleaded not guilty and no court date has yet been set.
Photographs in court papers filed by federal prosecutors on Monday evening show stacks of boxes in a Mar-a-Lago storage room as part of the case against former President Donald Trump
In the meantime, the two sides have been tussling over the legality of Smith's appointment and whether the former president should be barred from making comments about the FBI team that searched his Mar-a-Lago headquarters.
Prosecutors filed a 30-page argument on Monday, which included a string of pictures taken during the search on August 8, 2022.
Among them is an apparently unsigned letter, on White House headed paper, to the family of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre at an elementary school in 2012.
'Your family's courage and strength have touched people across our country,' it says, before thanking them for visiting the White House and promising to better protect schools.
It is pictured on top of a bunch of other White House papers and a copy of the Washington Post which leads with a story about Trump.
Another image shows a box filled with shirts and other clothes, plus a cover sheet marked: 'Confidential.'
Trump's lawyers argue that the precise order of items in boxes is crucial to their defense, indicating when and where documents were filed.
Prosecutors have admitted that some documents may have become muddled after being seized.
But they filed fresh details and images of how the search was conducted in order to bolster their case.
Among the documents was an apparently unsigned letter, on White House headed paper, to the family of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre at an elementary school in 2012
Another image shows a box filled of shirts clothes, plus a cover sheet marked: 'Confidential.'
One of the photographs taken by Trump Valet Walt Nauta in December 2021, showing how boxes had fallen over and their contents spilled on to the floor
Trump is charged with 40 felony counts, including illegally retaining documents and trying to obstruct government attempts to recover them. He denies the charges
The filing includes photographs taken by Trump valet Walt Nauta, who is a co-defendant, in December 2021.
Prosecutors say he took them when moving boxes from a storage area to Trump's quarters for review and discovered that some of the contained had fallen, spilling their contents.
One of those boxes, they write, included a classified document.
Prosecutors insisted in their filing that Trump had everything he needed to make his argument whether or not anything had shifted.
'For example, he suggests (for the first time) that he may wish to argue that the classified documents were buried in the boxes and hard to see, or that the placement of classified documents near dated items shows that they were placed in the box long ago and may have been forgotten,' they write.
'But because the overall contents of each box have not changed, Trump can argue both of those things and has everything he needs to do so.
'Nothing has been lost, much less destroyed, and there has been no bad faith.'
The images apparently show documents kept with presidential memorabilia
'Nothing has been lost, much less destroyed, and there has been no bad faith,' say prosecutors
The hearing as due to continue in closed court on Tuesday morning beforeJudge Aileen Cannon.
On Monday, a member of the prosecution team apologized to the judge, who has repeatedly ruled against the government.
It came after David Harbach appeared to bristle at questions from the U.S. district judge in Florida about the prosecution's claims of threats to law enforcement personnel and Trump's language about the FBI.
'I don’t appreciate your tone,' she snapped at one point.
He later said:'I just want to apologize about earlier. I didn't mean to be unprofessional. I'm sorry about that.'
