Washington – Federal judge overseeing special counsel Jack Smith Classified documents case Against Donald Trump, the former president’s legal team has again rejected requests from an order filed Monday evening.
Judge Eileen Cannon Trump’s defense attorneys and his co-defendants denied many of the claims that the 2023 indictment was technically flawed, but he criticized prosecutors’ description of an incident as unnecessary to the charges and agreed to strike a passage from the charging document. does not contain a charge of impropriety.”
Smith indicted Trump on 40 counts, including 40 counts of unlawful possession of national security information, after investigators recovered hundreds of classified documents from his Florida estate at the White House. Ex-President and his co-defendants – Assist Valda Nauta and former Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos de Oliveira – is also accused of engaging in a scheme to obstruct a federal investigation.
All three have pleaded not guilty and have denied wrongdoing.
Smith’s office declined to comment on the latest ruling. Trump’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira made several arguments in court and dismissed the charges before going to trial, including multiple crimes listed under the same indictment, and prosecutors failed to show that Nauta and De Oliveira included classified documents. They are accused of moving in boxes. The defense also said the form in which the charges were written was technically inadequate.
Cannon rejected those requests because the language in the indictment was legally permissible. In certain circumstances, he wrote down the issues raised by the defense at trial.
Although a near-total victory for Smith, the judge’s ruling criticized the style of the special counsel’s indictment, saying it contained “redundant allegations too similar to the story of the government’s prosecution theory.” Cannon wrote the “speaking indictment” — a term used to describe an explanatory charging document — was “legally unnecessary” for the allegations against Trump and the language underlying the allegations.
Despite the criticism, he ruled that in 2021, all of the nearly 60-page indictment would stand except for a paragraph in which prosecutors described a moment in which Trump allegedly showed a classified map of a foreign nation to a man who did not have a security clearance. .
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The judge wrote that the paragraph was unnecessary and should be stricken from the indictment because Trump was not accused of showing classified records to anyone else. However, she left open the possibility that the alleged conduct could be included in any investigation after a formal prosecution.
His ruling was in line with comments he’s made in past court hearings, in which he referred to the impeachment documents against Trump as “talkative indictments” and noted their length.
Cannon’s order on Monday mirrored others issued in recent months, in which he dismissed Trump’s legal arguments but wrote critical of the special counsel and his lawyers.
In April, he agreed with Smith on the names of potential witnesses Publicly filed documents are redacted, but chided the attorneys for not making that particular argument sooner. Last month, Cannon criticized Smith’s team for failing to speak up defensively, describing them as “absolutely devoid of substance and professional respect”. It rejected their request to limit Trump’s speech About law enforcement in the case. However, Cannon allowed the special counsel to reconsider his request, and he is still considering it.
A trial date for the case has yet to be set, the judge said, as he is working on other pre-trial matters. Cannon has previously rejected other arguments Trump has brought to drop the charges and has set public hearings on various motions throughout the summer months.
Smith filed four federal charges against Trump in Washington, D.C., alleging that he worked to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election. The former president has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and the case is currently on hold as the Supreme Court considers his claims that the president is immune from prosecution.
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