Judge rejects Trump’s bid to dismiss classified documents case but agrees to strike an allegation in the charges

washington —The federal judge who supervises special counsel Jack Smith case of classified documents against Donald Trump has once again rejected requests from the former president’s legal team to dismiss the charges against him, according to an order filed Monday night.

Judge Aileen Cannon denied numerous allegations from Trump’s defense lawyers and his co-defendants, arguing that the 2023 indictment was technically flawed, but she criticized prosecutors’ description of an incident as unnecessary to the charges and agreed to eliminate a single paragraph from the document of indictment because she said it “contained allegations of wrongfully uncharged offense.”

Smith charged Trump with 40 counts that include illegally withholding national defense information after investigators recovered hundreds of classified documents from his time in the White House at his Florida estate. The former president and his co-defendants – advisor Walta Nauta and former Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos de Oliveira – are also accused of involvement in an alleged scheme to obstruct the federal investigation.

All three have pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.

Smith’s office declined to comment on the recent decision. Trump’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump, Nauta and de Oliveira presented several arguments to the court in their attempt to dismiss the charges before they went to trial, including that multiple alleged crimes were listed under a single charge and that prosecutors failed to demonstrate that Nauta and de Oliveria knew they were contained confidential documents. in the boxes they are accused of moving. The defense also claimed that the way the charges were written was technically insufficient.

Cannon rejected these allegations because he said the language of the accusation was legally permissible. In some circumstances, she wrote, issues could be raised by the defense at trial.

While it was a near-total victory for Smith, the judge’s decision also criticized the special counsel’s charging style as containing “non-essential allegations more akin to a narrative about the government’s theory of prosecution.” Cannon wrote that the “verbal indictment” — a term used to describe a descriptive indictment document — contained allegations and language against Trump that were “legally unnecessary” to the underlying charges.

Despite criticism, she ruled that nearly the entire 60-page indictment would stand, except for a single paragraph in which prosecutors described a moment in 2021 when Trump allegedly showed an individual who did not have a security clearance a classified map of a foreign nation. .

The judge wrote that the paragraph was unnecessary and would be deleted from the indictment, since Trump is not accused of showing anyone else confidential records. She did, however, leave open the possibility that the alleged conduct could be included in any trial after due litigation.

Her decision was in line with comments she made in previous court hearings, in which she specifically called the charging documents against Trump a “verbal indictment” and noted their scope.

Cannon’s order Monday also mirrored others issued in recent months in which she rejected Trump’s legal arguments but wrote critically of the special counsel and his prosecutors.

In April, she agreed with Smith that the names of potential witnesses should be remain redacted in publicly archived documents, but chided prosecutors for not making that specific argument sooner. Last month, Cannon criticized Smith’s team for failing to speak to the defense and described them as “utterly lacking in substance and professional courtesy” when she rejected his request to limit Trump’s speech on the application of the law in the case. Cannon, however, allowed the special counsel to resubmit her request and she is still considering it.

A trial date for the case has not yet been set, as the judge said she is working on other pre-trial matters. Cannon previously rejected other arguments made by Trump that the charges should be dropped and scheduled public hearings on several motions over the summer months.

Smith also charged Trump in Washington, D.C., with four federal charges alleging he worked to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election. The former president has pleaded not guilty to those charges and the case is currently on hold while the Supreme Court considers the his claims of presidential immunity from prosecution.