Background: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaking during CPAC in February 2024 (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File). Inset: Jack Smith speaks about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Aug. 1, 2023, in Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice to prevent the potential destruction of any records or documents from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and efforts to try and overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“I will not allow the corrupt weaponization of the United States government to be swept under the rug as Jack Smith and others who unjustly targeted President Trump attempt to avoid accountability,” Paxton said in a statement. “The American people deserve transparency, and those responsible for these unlawful witch hunts must not destroy the evidence of their own misdeeds.”
According to court documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Paxton’s office on Nov. 8, 2024, made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a swath of documents and communications concerning the special counsel’s investigations into Trump’s activities. Paxton on Monday filed a motion with the court seeking a temporary restraining order prohibiting Smith and his team from destroying records to “avoid accountability.”
“Because both Smith’s office and his investigation of President Trump are about to end, there is little doubt that many of his records are releasable under FOIA,” the TRO motion states. “But there is also an unacceptable likelihood that Special Counsel Smith will lose or destroy these records, or otherwise make them permanently unavailable, if the courts do not intervene.”
In the filing, Paxton baselessly asserts that the court’s intervention is required because the investigations themselves were unlawful, as were the actions of investigators involved in the probes.
“Attorney General Paxton, however, fears that many releasable records — including those that he sought — will never see daylight. That is not because DOJ has any legal reason to withhold them,” the filing states. “Rather, Attorney General Paxton has a well-founded belief as set forth herein that Defendants will simply destroy the records. That is how they and/or their predecessors have operated in the recent past. And Jack Smith’s team has conducted itself in multiple ways that suggest it cannot be blindly trusted to preserve, and eventually produce, all of its records.”
Paxton claims that because “many people” close to Trump have been “promising accountability for Smith” in the wake of Trump’s 2024 presidential election victory, Smith has “a strong incentive to minimize transparency and accountability in every way possible.” The lawsuit, per Paxton, is a “modest attempt to avoid that obstruction of accountability.”
Smith last week formally began winding down the federal criminal investigations Trump due to the DOJ’s long-standing policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
Paxton himself is no stranger to FOIA controversy. The nonpartisan government watchdog group American Oversight is seeking emails Paxton sent around the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and communications with gun industry lobbyists following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. A Texas appellate court earlier this year ruled in favor of the watchdog group after it said the requests were stonewalled. That case remains ongoing.
Paxton’s filing comes after Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent Smith a letter stating the committee was “concerned” that the special counsel’s office “may attempt to purge” records relevant to the committee’s request for information and documents.
“You should construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to prevent the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently, of all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that are or may be responsive to this congressional inquiry,” Jordan wrote.
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