Smith, Jack (Attorney)

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      Judge Denies Effort by Trump Co-Defendant to Have Charges Dismissed

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      Walt Nauta, a personal aide to former President Donald J. Trump, claimed that he was the victim of vindictive prosecution in the classified documents case.The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case on Saturday rejected an effort by one of his co-defendants to have the charges he is facing dismissed by claiming that he was the victim of a vindictive prosecution by the government.The co-defendant, Walt Nauta, who works as a personal aide to Mr. Trump, had accused prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, of unfairly indicting him because he declined to help their efforts to build a case against the former president by testifying against him in front of a grand jury.Mr. Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., also claimed that at a meeting at the Justice Department two years ago, prosecutors had threatened to derail a judgeship he was seeking if he did not prevail on his client to turn on Mr. Trump.But in an order issued on Saturday night, Judge Aileen M. Cannon rejected those arguments, ruling that even though Mr. Nauta had refused to provide testimony against Mr. Trump, there was “no evidence suggesting that charges were brought to punish him for doing so.”And while Judge Cannon refused to weigh in on the details about Mr. Woodward’s claims that prosecutors had sought to twist his arm to win Mr. Nauta’s cooperation, she denied his vindictive prosecution motion because, as she noted, he had claimed that the government was biased against him, not against his client, as required by the law.The indictment in the documents case, which was filed last June in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., accuses Mr. Nauta of conspiring with Mr. Trump to hide from the government several boxes of classified materials that the former president removed from the White House when he left office and took to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Special Counsel Is Said to Be Planning to Pursue Trump Cases Past the Election

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      Jack Smith plans to continue two criminal cases against Donald J. Trump until Inauguration Day if the former president wins, according to a person familiar with his thinking.The special counsel Jack Smith plans to pursue his two criminal cases against former President Donald J. Trump through the election and even up until Inauguration Day if Mr. Trump wins the presidential race, according to a person familiar with Mr. Smith’s thinking.Mr. Smith believes that under Justice Department regulations, his mandate as special counsel and his authority to keep the cases going do not depend on a change of administration and extend until he is formally removed from his post, the person said.As a practical matter, that means that the special counsel’s office is prepared to push forward for as long as possible on the two indictments it has filed against Mr. Trump. One of those, brought in Washington, has accused the former president of plotting to subvert the 2020 election. The other, filed in Florida, has charged Mr. Trump with holding on to a trove of highly sensitive classified documents after he left office and then obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.Mr. Smith’s decision to keep the cases going, reported earlier by The Washington Post, comes as a landmark Supreme Court ruling on executive immunity this week has effectively postponed the election interference case until after voters go to the polls in November.At the same time, Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the classified documents case in Florida, has declined to set a trial date as she grapples with an ever-expanding constellation of legal issues and court hearings.A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment about his plans for the two cases.It is not unusual that a special counsel like Mr. Smith would seek to continue prosecuting cases under his command even after a change of presidential administrations. The Justice Department regulations governing special counsels give prosecutors like him day-to-day independence from the attorneys general who appointed them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Rules for Member of Jan 6. Mob in Obstruction Case

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      The Supreme Court sided on Friday with a member of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying that prosecutors had overstepped in using an obstruction law to charge him.The ruling may affect hundreds of other prosecutions of rioters, as well as part of the federal case against former President Donald J. Trump accusing him of plotting to subvert the 2020 election. But the precise impact of the court’s ruling on those other cases was not immediately clear.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, read the law narrowly, saying it applied only when the defendant’s actions impaired the integrity of physical evidence.Lower courts will now apply that strict standard, and it will presumably lead them to dismiss charges against many defendants.The vote was 6 to 3, but it featured unusual alliances. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal, voted with the majority. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, wrote the dissent.Most Jan. 6 defendants have not been charged under the law, which prosecutors have reserved for the most serious cases, and those who have been charged under it face other counts, as well. The defendant in the case before the justices, Joseph W. Fischer, for instance, faced six other charges.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge in Trump Documents Case Hears Arguments Over Special Counsel

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      Judge Aileen Cannon held a hearing to consider a question that has been quickly dismissed in other cases: whether there is a constitutional basis for the appointment of a special counsel.Former President Donald J. Trump’s defense team tried on Friday to persuade the judge overseeing the national security documents case to dismiss the indictment, pushing a long-shot argument that the special counsel, Jack Smith, was not properly appointed.Such defense motions are routinely denied in federal cases involving special counsels. But the judge presiding over this case, Aileen M. Cannon, has given Mr. Trump’s request extra import by holding hearings and allowing three outside lawyers time in court to make additional arguments about whether there is a constitutional mechanism for naming special counsels.“This has been very illuminating and helpful,” Judge Cannon said at the close of about four hours of arguments and a steady beat of her own questions, which often began with, “Would you agree that.”Mr. Trump’s team argued that the attorney general lacks constitutional authority to appoint someone with the powers of a special counsel. “The text of these statutes really matters,” said Emil Bove, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. He also argued that Mr. Smith should have been confirmed by the Senate because his position is so powerful.Prosecutors argued that well-established precedents demonstrate that the attorney general does have that power, citing a string of court decisions upholding special counsel investigations. “We’re interpreting statutory terms consistent with the Constitution,” said James I. Pearce, a member of the special counsel’s team.Judge Cannon’s questions addressed language in specific laws, past precedents and excerpts from lawyers’ written briefs. At times on Friday, her courtroom sounded like a university seminar on the history of the Justice Department, national scandals that have drawn special counsels and the various interpretations of the meaning of words in decades-old laws.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Lawyers Argue Barring Attacks on F.B.I. Would Censor ‘Political Speech’

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      In a filing, the lawyers in the classified documents case made an aggressive, and at times misleading, argument against prosecutors’ request for the judge to curb his attacks on agents.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump pushed back on Friday night in an aggressive — and at times misleading — way against an effort to curb his public attacks on the F.B.I. agents working on his classified documents case in Florida.In a 20-page court filing, the lawyers assailed prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, for seeking to limit Mr. Trump’s remarks about the F.B.I. on the eve of two consequential political events: the first presidential debate, scheduled for June 27, and the Republican National Convention, set to start on July 15.“The motion is a naked effort to impose totalitarian censorship of core political speech, under threat of incarceration, in a clear attempt to silence President Trump’s arguments to the American people about the outrageous nature of this investigation and prosecution,” the lawyers wrote.The dispute began last month when Mr. Smith’s team asked Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the case, to revise Mr. Trump’s conditions of release to bar him from making any public remarks that might endanger agents involved in the proceeding.The request came days after Mr. Trump made a series of blatantly false statements, claiming that the F.B.I. had been prepared to shoot him when agents executed a search warrant in August 2022 at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida. In that search, the agents discovered more than 100 classified documents. Mr. Trump is now charged with illegally retaining classified information and obstructing the government’s attempts to retrieve it.The distortions arose from a gross mischaracterization by the former president of a recently unsealed order for the Mar-a-Lago search that included boilerplate language intended to limit the use of deadly force when agents execute warrants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Here’s Where Trump’s Other Cases Stand

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      After being convicted in a Manhattan courtroom, the former president still faces charges in three criminal prosecutions, all of which are tangled up in procedural delays.Former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan came to an end this week when a jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to upset his 2016 presidential campaign.But Mr. Trump is still facing federal charges, brought by a special counsel, in two cases: one in Florida, where he is accused of illegally holding on to classified documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, and one in Washington, D.C., where he’s accused of plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He faces similar election-tampering charges in a third case brought by a local prosecutor in Georgia.The proceedings — all of which are bogged down in delays — can be confusing to keep track of. Here are updates on where each of them stands.Federal Documents CaseThe federal indictment against Mr. Trump in the documents case.Jon Elswick/Associated PressIn this case, Mr. Trump is accused of illegally holding on to a large amount of sensitive national security material after leaving office and then plotting to obstruct repeated efforts by the government to get it back. The charges were brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to oversee the federal investigations into Mr. Trump.The case is tied up in efforts by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to have the charges against him dismissed before they go to trial. To that end, the lawyers have filed a barrage of motions attacking the indictment on a number of grounds. Those include claims that Mr. Smith was improperly appointed to his job and that he filed the charges as part of a politicized effort to harm Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Lawyers Assail Limited Gag Order Request in Documents Case

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      The latest battle over what the former president can say about a continuing legal case came after he falsely suggested that F.B.I. agents were authorized to shoot him when they searched Mar-a-Lago.Former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers on Monday assailed a request by federal prosecutors to limit what he could say about a new flare-up in a case accusing him of illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office.In an angry court filing, the lawyers pushed back hard against the request by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to revise Mr. Trump’s conditions of release by forbidding him to make any public comments that might endanger federal agents working on the prosecution.On Friday evening, Mr. Smith’s team requested what amounted to a limited gag order on Mr. Trump, prompted by what it called “grossly misleading” social media posts the former president made last week falsely claiming that the F.B.I. had been authorized to kill him when agents searched Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club and residence, in August 2022.The former president’s statements were based on a recently unsealed operational order for the search that contained boilerplate language spelling out that the use of deadly force could be used only in case of emergency, a standard provision applied to all searches conducted by the bureau.In their motion to Judge Aileen M. Cannon in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that Mr. Smith’s request was “an extraordinary, unprecedented and unconstitutional censorship application” that “unjustly targets President Trump’s campaign speech while he is the leading candidate for the presidency.”Mr. Trump’s legal team said that Mr. Smith’s request should be stricken from the docket and that he and his prosecutors should face contempt sanctions for filing it in the first place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge in Documents Case Rejects Dismissal Motions by Trump Co-Defendants

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      Judge Aileen M. Cannon denied requests by Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira to have the charges against them dropped.The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case on Thursday denied initial attempts by Mr. Trump’s two co-defendants to have the charges against them dismissed.The ruling by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, was the first time she had rejected dismissal motions by the two men, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, both of whom work for Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.Prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, say that Mr. Nauta, one of Mr. Trump’s closest personal aides, and Mr. De Oliveira, the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, conspired with the former president to hide from the government boxes of classified materials that Mr. Trump had removed from the White House, and then took part in a related plot to destroy security camera footage of the boxes being moved. The men have also been charged with lying to investigators working on the case.At a hearing last week in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., lawyers for the two men tried to convince Judge Cannon that their clients had no idea that the boxes they had moved on Mr. Trump’s behalf contained classified materials. The lawyers also said they needed more details about the evidence against the men than what was contained in the 53-page superseding indictment.Mr. Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., raised an additional claim: that the obstruction statute his client was charged with violating was unconstitutionally vague.On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard somewhat similar arguments about that law, which has been used not only against hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but also against Mr. Trump himself in both the classified documents case and the federal case in which he stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More