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Post by Webster on Jul 19, 2023 15:25:07 GMT -5
(The Guardian) The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case on Wednesday denied the proposed protective order for discovery materials submitted by prosecutors because both sides had not sufficiently discussed the matter. The protective order is needed for prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith to start making the classified documents that they intend to use at trial available to Trump’s team in discovery. Trump was charged last month with retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, including US unclear secrets. As a result, his trial will take place according to the rules set out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa. The denial by the US district court judge Aileen Cannon of the protective order – required under Section 3 of Cipa – will add another delay to pre-trial proceedings. The complex procedures in Cipa, which exist to protect against the defense threatening to suddenly reveal classified information at trial, means the pre-trial phase takes longer compared to standard criminal cases. Legal experts had always expected Trump to object to the protective order because his team wants to delay until after the 2024 election in the hope that the matter becomes moot if he wins re-election, but for the judge to deny the protective order is unusual.
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Post by Webster on Jul 19, 2023 15:33:28 GMT -5
(The Guardian) The federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case signaled that she could delay the trial until 2024, appearing inclined to find that the matter was sufficiently complex after hearing arguments from prosecutors and the former president’s lawyers on Tuesday. The US district court judge Aileen Cannon did not rule from the bench on a timetable during the roughly two-hour pre-trial conference at the courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, and concluded the hearing by saying she would enter a written order at a later date. Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the documents case and the investigation into Trump’s efforts to obstruct the transfer of power, had asked Cannon last week to reject Trump’s suggestion to postpone the trial until after the 2024 election. The dueling requests from Trump and the justice department present an early test for Cannon, a Trump appointee who is under heightened scrutiny for issuing favorable rulings to the former president during the criminal investigation, before they were overturned on appeal. Cannon appeared skeptical of arguments from both sides at the hearing, telling prosecutors she was unaware of any trial involving classified information that went to trial in six months and telling Trump’s lawyers that the 2024 election would not factor into her scheduling decisions. The judge said at issue was whether the documents case was sufficiently “complex” – because of novel legal issues and the volume of discovery materials that prosecutors will turn over to the defence – to warrant a timetable that would delay pre-trial proceedings beyond December.
In response to pointed questions from US district court judge Aileen Cannon, prosecutors seemed to acknowledge that their timetable for a December trial date was aggressive, although Cannon also separately told Trump’s lawyers she could not indefinitely postpone setting a trial date as they had requested. Trump was charged last month with retaining national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa. The statute was passed in the 1980s to protect the government against the “graymail” problem in national security cases, a tactic in which the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, betting that the government would prefer to drop the charges rather than risk disclosure. While Cipa established a mechanism through which the government can safely charge cases involving classified documents, the series of steps that has to be followed means it takes longer to get to trial compared with regular criminal cases without national security implications. Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, have pleaded not guilty. The pair are currently co-defendants, though Nauta’s lawyer Stanley Woodward said – in arguing for an indefinite postponement – he might move to “sever” and seek a standalone trial for his client after reviewing the discovery.
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Post by Webster on Jul 19, 2023 15:34:27 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Judge appears inclined to delay Trump classified documents trial into 2024The reality of conducting pre-trial proceedings under Cipa is that Cannon’s trial date still has the potential to be pushed back. In the prosecution of former NSA analyst Reality Winner, the trial date was delayed multiple times during the discovery phase. The consequences of an extended delay could be far-reaching. If the case is not adjudicated until after the 2024 election and Donald Trump is re-elected, he could try to pardon himself or direct the attorney general to have the justice department drop the case. Ahead of the pre-trial conference, Trump’s lawyers Todd Blanche and Chris Kise argued in court filings that Cannon should not bother setting a tentative trial date until the major pre-trial motions were finished because they could not know how long classified discovery might take. The Trump legal team also claimed that going to trial before the 2024 presidential election – prosecutors have outlined a schedule for a trial date in December – would be unrealistic because of supposed challenges in selecting an impartial jury. In their reply last week, prosecutors took aim at Trump’s arguments for an indefinite delay, rejecting the claims that the charges touched on novel legal issues or that the discovery process was uniquely complex. “The defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal,” the prosecutors wrote. “But they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument, call it ‘novel,’ and then claim the court will require an indefinite continuance.” The filing took particular issue with the Trump’s lawyers’ suggestion that any trial should be delayed until after the 2024 election because of the supposed difficulty in selecting an impartial jury. Prosecutors wrote: To be sure, the government readily acknowledges that jury selection here may merit additional protocols (such as a questionnaire) that may be more time-consuming than in other cases, but those are reasons to start the process sooner rather than later.
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Post by Webster on Jul 21, 2023 15:34:35 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trial in Trump classified documents case set for next MayThe federal judge overseeing former president Donald Trump’s trial on his mishandling of classified documents case has set a trial date for 20 May 2024. The ruling from US district judge Aileen Cannon places Trump’s criminal trial less than six months ahead of the November 2024 presidential election. The trial had initially been scheduled for 14 August – a date that both the defense and prosecution opposed because they said they needed more time to prepare. The new trial date is a compromise between a request from prosecutors to set the trial for this coming December, and a request from Trump’s lawyers to schedule it after the election.
In pushing back the trial date to 20 May 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon wrote that “the Government’s proposed schedule is atypically accelerated and inconsistent with ensuring a fair trial”. She agreed with defense lawyers that the amount of evidence that would need to be sifted through before the trial, including classified information, was “voluminous”. She also said that the court will be “faced with extensive pre-trial motion practice on a diverse number of legal and factual issues, all in connection with a 38-count indictment”.
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Post by Webster on Jul 21, 2023 15:35:14 GMT -5
(The Guardian) If the trial date holds, it would follow close on the heels of a separate trial for Donald Trump on dozens of state charges of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to a porn star. It also means the trial will not start until deep into the presidential nominating calendar, coming amid multiple GOP presidential primaries. From CNN’s Kaitlan Collins:
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Post by Webster on Jul 27, 2023 17:55:28 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump faces additional charges in classified documents caseSpecial counsel Jack Smith has brought additional charges against Donald Trump in the case surrounding his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, according to court documents. The additional allegations of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information were added to the indictment by a team of prosecutors led by Smith. A new defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, was also added to the case. Trump charged with three new countsDonald Trump has been charged with three new counts in the case surrounding his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, according to new court documents. The former president is charged with one additional count of willful retention of National Defense Information. The superseding indictment also charges Trump, his aides Carlos De Oliveira and Walt Nauta with two new obstruction counts stemming from allegations that they attempted to delete surveillance camera footage last summer at Mar-a-Lago. From Politico’s Kyle Cheney:
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Post by Webster on Jul 27, 2023 17:59:33 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Here’s a bit more detail on Carlos De Oliveira, the maintenance worker at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate who has been charged by federal prosecutors investigating the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. -- De Oliveira has been charged with conspiracy to obstruct efforts to retrieve the documents, along with Trump and his aide Walt Nauta.
He first came to the attention of prosecutors as they investigated Trump’s response to repeated efforts by federal officials to retrieve presidential records and classified material that he had taken with him after leaving the White House, according to the New York Times.
Mr De Oliveira was caught on a surveillance camera moving boxes into a storage room at Mar-a-Lago at a crucial moment of the investigation: in the days between the issuance of a grand jury subpoena demanding all remaining classified material in Mr Trump’s possession and a visit by federal prosecutors to see Mr Trump’s lawyers and enforce the subpoena.
Phone records show that Mr De Oliveira also called an information technology worker at Mar-a-Lago last summer. The call caught the government’s attention because it was placed shortly after prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding the footage from the surveillance camera near the storage room.
The Trump campaign has released a statement following the news that the former president faces additional charges in the case surrounding his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House. The statement reads: This is nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him. Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden.
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Post by Webster on Jul 28, 2023 13:58:34 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump legal peril increases with new chargesDonald Trump is squarely in the cross hairs of federal prosecutors, who yesterday added new charges to the indictment brought against him in June for allegedly hiding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. It is also possible that today, special counsel Jack Smith will unveil a new indictment against the former president related to his actions on January 6. Last week, Trump said he had received a letter formally telling him he was a target in the investigation and yesterday, his lawyers attended a meeting at Smith’s offices – both signs that an indictment could be near. No former president has faced the sort of legal problems Trump is in, but there are also no signs yet that they’ve dented his standing among Republicans. He continues to lead polls among the party’s presidential candidates, and plans to spend this weekend rallying supporters in Erie, Pennsylvania. We’ll see if Washington has anything to say about the ongoing investigations against him today. Former Trump lawyer says evidence 'overwhelming' in Mar-a-Lago caseA former lawyer for Donald Trump who represented him in an earlier special counsel investigation has warned that the evidence revealed by Jack Smith in the Mar-a-Lago case is “overwhelming”. Ty Cobb represented Trump during a period early in his presidency when he was being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller for alleged ties to Russia, which ultimately did not amount to the type of scandal the then-president’s detractors hoped would sink his administration. But Cobb told CNN today that the charges in the Mar-a-Lago case brought by Smith, who was named a special counsel last year, are different. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports on why: A former Trump White House lawyer said the evidence against the former president over his handling of classified documents was now “overwhelming” and would “last an antiquity”, after new charges were filed in the case on Thursday. “I think this original indictment was engineered to last a thousand years and now this superseding indictment will last an antiquity,” Ty Cobb told CNN. “This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming.”
In June, the special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump on 37 counts regarding his handling of classified records after leaving the White House.
On Thursday, in a superseding indictment filed in a Florida court, four more charges were outlined. A second Trump staffer, the Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, was charged, alongside Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet. Nauta previously pleaded not guilty.
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Post by Webster on Jul 28, 2023 13:59:19 GMT -5
(The Guardian) As the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell and Maanvi Singh report, special counsel Jack Smith has both leveled new charges against Trump, and indicted a third person over the secret government materials found at Mar-a-Lago: Federal prosecutors on Thursday expanded the indictment against Donald Trump for retaining national security documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, unveiling new charges against him and an employee over an attempt to destroy surveillance footage.
The new charges – filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Florida – were outlined in a superseding indictment that named Mar-a-Lago club maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira as the third co-defendant in the case. Trump’s valet Walt Nauta was previously indicted for obstruction with the former president last month.
Trump’s legal exposure in the classified documents case grew after he was accused of attempting to destroy evidence and inducing someone else to destroy evidence, as well as an additional count under the Espionage Act for retaining a classified document about US plans to attack Iran that he discussed on tape at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.
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Post by Webster on Jul 28, 2023 20:53:57 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Video from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida would play a significant role in the investigation because, prosecutors say, it shows his valet, Walt Nauta, moving boxes of documents in and out of a storage room – including a day before an FBI visit to the property – at Trump’s direction. According to the indictment, Nauta met Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira at Mar-a-Lago on 25 June 2022. They went to a security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors and walked with a torch through a tunnel where the storage room was located, observing and pointing out surveillance cameras. Two days later, according to the indictment, De Oliveira walked through a basement tunnel with a Trump employee to a small room known as an “audio closet”. The two men had a conversation supposed to “remain between the two of them”. De Oliveira asked how many days the server retained footage. De Oliveira allegedly told the employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and asked: “What are we going to do?” The indictment asserts that Trump called De Oliveira before and after the incident, and that Nauta and De Oliveira were also in contact. Prosecutors further allege that, during a voluntary interview with the FBI last January, De Oliveira lied when he said he “never saw nothing” with regard to boxes at Mar-a-Lago. De Oliveira was added to the indictment, charged with obstruction and false statements related to that FBI interview. This could impact the trial date, currently set for May next year, by which stage the Republican nomination may well have been decided.
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Post by Webster on Jul 28, 2023 20:54:33 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Along with two new charges of obstruction of justice, there was another new count of retaining classified material. Special counsel Jack Smith describes a July 2021 incident in which Donald Trump bragged about a “plan of attack” against another country in an interview at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. The former president then waved around the classified documents to his guests: a writer, publisher and two Trump staff members who all lacked security clearances “This is secret information,” he said, according to a recording cited in the documents, claiming that, “as president I could have declassified it” – but he had not. The indictment says the document was returned to the federal government on 17 January 2022, which is the date Trump provided 15 boxes of records to the National Archives. Trump now faces 40 criminal counts in the classified documents case alone. Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer, told CNN: I think this original indictment was engineered to last a thousand years and now this superseding indictment will last an antiquity. This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming.The new charges were made public hours after Trump said his lawyers met with justice department officials investigating his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, in a sign that another set of criminal charges could come soon.
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Post by Webster on Jul 31, 2023 18:16:03 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump co-defendant Carlos De Oliveira makes first court appearanceCarlos De Oliveira, the property manager of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, made his first appearance in a Miami courtroom on Monday as part of the special counsel’s investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. During the roughly 10-minute hearing, De Oliveira, the third and newest co-defendant in Trump’s classified documents case, heard the charges against him and received pre-trial orders. He was unable to enter a plea because he had failed to secure local counsel. Chief Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres granted an extension request, and the arraignment is now scheduled to take place on 10 August at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida. De Oliveira was released on a $100,000 bond pending trial. De Oliveira was indicted on Thursday on four charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements to the FBI. Trump and his longtime valet, Walt Nauta, were charged in the classified documents case last month and face additional counts in the indictment that charged De Oliveira. Both Trump and Nauta have pleaded not guilty to the initial charges.
Carlos De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago property manager and third co-defendant in the special counsel’s classified documents case, declined to answer questions as he left the Miami courthouse. De Oliveira was escorted by federal agents and his attorney, John Irving, who said it was time for the justice department “to put their money where their mouth is” after charging his client. De Oliveira was added as a third defendant in Donald Trump’s complicated classified documents indictment on Thursday. He faces charges such as trying to obstruct justice, concealing records and documents, and making false statements to the FBI. De Oliveira, 56, was a valet, maintenance worker and more recently a property manager at Trump’s resort, Mar-a-Lago, according to the superseding indictment. The indictment said De Oliveira helped Trump’s personal valet, Walt Nauta, move 30 boxes of documents, from Trump’s residence to a storage room, and asked the person responsible for surveillance at the resort to delete the footage on behalf of Trump. He was also accused of draining the resort pool to flood the rooms that contained surveillance footage. When the FBI discovered the documents at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, Trump allegedly called De Oliveira and said he would get him an attorney.
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Post by Webster on Aug 4, 2023 14:53:06 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Reuters has a report out today that raised questions about the abilities of Aileen Cannon, the federal judge handling Donald Trump’s trial in Florida on charges related to stashing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and conspiring to keep them out of the hands of government archivists. Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, already drew scrutiny last year with a ruling in the investigative stage of the Mar-a-Lago case that was seen by some as partial to the former president. After he was indicted by special counsel Jack Smith in June, Cannon was randomly chosen to preside over his criminal trial. Cannon is a relatively inexperienced federal judge, and since Trump’s trial deals with classified materials, it is expected to be complex. Reuters reports that earlier this year, Cannon made several errors in the early stages of another defendant’s trial, and prosecutors later entered into an unusual plea agreement with the defendant. The story quotes several legal experts worrying over whether Cannon’s mistakes could bode ill for her ability to handle the proceedings in the Trump case. Here’s more from their story: Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon closed jury selection for the trial of an Alabama man - accused by federal prosecutors of running a website with images of child sex abuse - to the defendant’s family and the general public, a trial transcript obtained by Reuters showed. A defendant’s right to a public trial is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment.
Cannon, a 42-year-old former federal prosecutor appointed by Trump to the bench in 2020 late in his presidency, also neglected to swear in the prospective jury pool - an obligatory procedure in which people who may serve on the panel pledge to tell the truth during the selection process. This error forced Cannon to re-start jury selection before the trial ended abruptly with defendant William Spearman pleading guilty as part of an agreement with prosecutors.
Cannon’s decision to close the courtroom represents “a fundamental constitutional error,” said Stephen Smith, a professor at the Santa Clara School of Law in California. “She ignored the public trial right entirely. It’s as though she didn’t know it existed.”
In Cannon’s decision to close jury selection, the judge cited space restrictions in her small courtroom at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida. Legal experts said closing a courtroom to the public has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as a “structural error” - a mistake so significant that it can invalidate a criminal trial because it strikes at the heart of the entire process. A public trial also has been found to implicate First Amendment rights of freedom of assembly, speech and press.
Cannon’s decision raises questions about how she will handle the intense public interest at Trump’s trial, which is scheduled to begin on May 20, 2024, in the same courtroom.
The unprecedented prosecution of a former president as he campaigns seeking a return to the White House promises to bring enormous public scrutiny. The trial also will represent the first time that Cannon handles a case involving classified evidence and the arcane rules surrounding it.
Cannon’s trial errors also illustrate her judicial inexperience, five former federal judges - Democratic and Republican appointees - said in interviews. “A lack of experience can be really hard in a big case, especially when there’s all this media attention and everything you do is being watched and commented on and second-guessed,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who leads the Berkeley Judicial Institute in California.
Fogel said Cannon made “two fairly significant mistakes” during jury selection in the June trial. “It looms larger because of who the judge is,” Fogel added.
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Post by Webster on Aug 7, 2023 12:05:34 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Judge in Trump documents case appears to disclose ongoing grand jury investigation Aileen Cannon, the federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, appeared to disclose an ongoing grand jury investigation in a court filing today, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports: Cannon was appointed to the bench by Trump, and faced scrutiny last year for a decision in an earlier stage of the Mar-a-Lago case that some legal experts viewed as favorable to the former president, and which was later overturned by an appeals court. Cannon’s is presiding over Trump’s trial in Florida on charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith, who alleges the former president illegally stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and conspired to hide them from government officials sent to retrieve them.
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Post by Webster on Aug 10, 2023 14:06:11 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump's co-defendants back in court to face charges in classified documents caseThe property manager of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and a personal aide to the former president are due back in federal court in Florida on Thursday to face charges in the case regarding the mishandling of classified documents, after federal prosecutors expanded the indictment against Trump late last month. Carlos De Oliveira, the Florida property manager, is scheduled to be arraigned in Fort Pierce before a magistrate judge on charges including conspiracy to obstruct justice in the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith. Thursday’s arraignment will be the first time De Oliveira enters a plea in the case. The maintenance worker was charged in a superseding indictment last month but had not yet found a Florida-based attorney to represent him, as required by the court. He was released on $100,000 personal surety bond. Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet, is expected to enter a plea for a second time after he was charged alongside the former president earlier this summer. He pleaded not guilty to the charges he faced in the original indictment. Donald Trump was also scheduled to be arraigned today on the new charges, which includes allegations that he schemed with De Oliveira and Nauta to try to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage sought by investigators, as well as new counts of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information. But the former president submitted a waiver of appearance for Thursday’s arraignment and entered a plea of not guilty. His filing said: I have received a copy of the Indictment and the plea ls NOT GUILTY to the charged offense(s).Nauta and De Oliveira are due to be arraigned at a hearing at 10am eastern time before US magistrate judge Shaniek Mills Maynard.
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