Prosecutors Move to Drop Classified Documents Case Against Trump’s Co-Defendants

Prosecutors Move to Drop Classified Documents Case Against Trump’s Co-Defendants

If the appeals court agrees, it would be the formal end of the case in which Donald J. Trump was accused of illegally holding onto classified materials after he left office.

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By Alan Feuer

Alan Feuer has covered Donald J. Trump’s criminal cases.

Federal prosecutors moved on Wednesday to drop their last remaining efforts to prosecute President Trump’s two co-defendants in the classified documents case brought by the former special counsel Jack Smith.

In a single-page filing, prosecutors asked a federal appeals court in Atlanta to dismiss an appeal that had been filed before Mr. Trump took office seeking to reinstate criminal charges against the two men, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.

If the appeals court agrees to drop the government’s challenge, it would be the formal end of the case in which Mr. Trump was accused of illegally holding onto classified materials after he left office in 2021. He was also charged with conspiring with Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira to obstruct the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.

The case ended up in front of the appeals court this summer after Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, dismissed the charges in their entirety. Her ruling determined — against decades of legal precedent — that Mr. Smith had been unlawfully appointed to his post as special counsel.

While Mr. Smith’s deputies challenged that decision, they were ultimately forced to drop the appeal where Mr. Trump was concerned after he was re-elected in November. A binding Justice Department policy prohibits pursuing criminal prosecutions of a sitting president.

But prosecutors did not immediately seek to drop their appeal regarding Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira. The case remained in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit after Mr. Trump took office and the top leadership of the Justice Department was replaced by his appointees.

In their filing on Wednesday, prosecutors gave no explanation for why they had decided now to dismiss the appeal against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira. But it was widely expected that Mr. Trump or the Justice Department would take some sort of action to have the case against the men dropped. Mr. Nauta, in particular, remains close to Mr. Trump and still serves as one of his top personal aides in the White House.

The only aspect of the classified documents case that remains unresolved at this point concerns a section of a final report that Mr. Smith wrote about the proceeding. A separate section of Mr. Smith’s report concerning the other federal case he filed against Mr. Trump — the one accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election — was released this month.

During the Biden administration, top Justice Department officials had sought to release the classified documents section of the report to Congress alone, saying it should not be made public while the case against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira was still active.

But last week, Judge Cannon intervened and barred officials from sending that volume of the report to anyone outside the Justice Department out of concern that lawmakers might make public comments about it.

It seems unlikely that the department will now release the classified documents volume, given that both Judge Cannon and Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said it contains revelations that could be damaging not only to the president but also to some “anticipated” members of his administration.

But news organizations, including The New York Times, have filed Freedom of Information lawsuits seeking to obtain a copy of the report.