Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas rejected a push to order special counsel Jack Smith to preserve all records related to his investigation into President-elect Donald Trump, calling the argument from state Attorney General Ken Paxton "unserious."
Paxton, a Republican, asked Kacsmaryk to order Smith not to destroy any records, including the communications the special counsel's office had had with "outside parties," information about cellphones Smith's team had used, and several other items, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Requests to preserve such information often come while other parties, including congressional committees or law enforcement, expect to conduct inquiries or file lawsuits.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., asked Smith's office three days after Trump won the election to preserve all records of his election interference investigations and his classified documents.
Paxton, however, said in his lawsuit that he is requesting Smith's records under the federal Freedom of Information Act, and argued that he's concerned that the special counsel has already destroyed the records or plans to destroy them.
In his arguments, Paxton claimed that "widely shared photos" showed a paper-shredding truck parked outside of the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Kacsmaryk, though, dismissed Paxton's claim Monday and wrote in a four-page order that the "claim is unserious" as the truck could have been parked there for many reasons.
"Defendants could shred paper for many legitimate reasons, and Plaintiffs have proffered nothing to suggest more nefarious intentions," said the judge.
Paxton also argued that the Federal Records Act of 1950, governing how federal records are collected, retained, and preserved, would prohibit Smith from destroying the documents.
But Kacsmaryk said he has no reason to believe Smith is not complying with the federal law.
"The Court must presume that, absent evidence to the contrary, Defendants act in accordance with their foregoing duties," he wrote.
An appeals court on Tuesday granted a request from Smith's office to drop a case it had filed against Trump on charges of mishandling classified documents, with the special counsel saying that the DOJ has a long-standing policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Smith is continuing to pursue the case against Trump's two codefendants, his valet, Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira. The president-elect had been accused of removing top secret documents after he left the White House at the end of his first term of office and obstructing the efforts to retrieve them.
Monday, a judge granted Smith's request to drop a case charging Trump with conspiring to overthrow the results of the 2020 election after his loss to President Joe Biden.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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