Classified documents case dismissed against Trump associates
A federal appeals court on Tuesday dismissed criminal charges against two former co-defendants of President Donald Trump accused of helping him mishandle classified documents after his first presidency.
The move comes at the behest of the Justice Department, which decided to drop its appeal in the case against the two Trump associates, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, following Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration. While Biden was in office, the department asked the appeals court to revive the case against the two men and Trump after a trial judge dismissed it in July but dropped its appeal in late November, following Trump's election victory.
De Oliveira and Nauta were accused of moving dozens of boxes between a storage room and Trump's Florida residence after a federal subpoena for classified records was issued in May 2022. De Oliveira was a property manager at Trump's Florida-based Mar-a-Lago club; Nauta was a personal valet to the real estate mogul.
"Carlos should never have been charged in the first place, and I have zero doubt that he would have been acquitted at trial," said John S. Irving, a lawyer for De Oliveira, in a statement to Paste BN. "It’s nice to see the Justice Department using better judgment these days."
Nauta couldn't be immediately reached for comment.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee to the federal bench, determined in July that the case needed to be thrown out because the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith to head the investigation and potential prosecution was, she concluded, unlawful.
"Mr. Smith is a private citizen exercising the full power of a United States Attorney, and with very little oversight or supervision," Cannon wrote.
Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general under President Joe Biden, appointed special counsels to head investigations of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Biden's son Hunter.
Cannon's controversial decision prompted calls from former government officials and law professors for an appeals court to revive the case and take it out of her hands. They pointed to multiple rulings she had made that they said created the appearance that she was biased in Trump's favor.
Trump's election victory was a major boon to him in fighting his criminal cases.
The Justice Department dropped both the classified documents case and a federal case against Trump on charges he tried unlawfully to steal the 2020 election. A New York judge also allowed Trump to go free without any conditions following his conviction for falsifying business records and his subsequent election victory.
Contributing: Bart Jansen