The judge in the Mar-a-Lago case on Monday mostly ruled in favor of the special counsel by upholding Donald Trump’s Espionage Act indictment, she but still struck one “prejudicial” paragraph that alleged the former president showed off a “classified map,” and she expressed “concerns” about Jack Smith’s approach in the case of “significant public interest.” To top it all off, the defense immediately filed another motion to dismiss the case but on separate grounds, this time claiming the “prosecution team destroyed exculpatory evidence.”
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, in sum and substance declined to throw out the indictment against Trump, his valet Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, even though the defense collectively argued that the charging document was deficient enough to warrant dismissal.
Cannon ruled that the “identified deficiencies, even if generating some arguable confusion, are either permitted by law, raise evidentiary challenges not appropriate for disposition at this juncture, and/or do not require dismissal even if technically deficient, so long as the jury is instructed appropriately and presented with adequate verdict forms as to each Defendants’ alleged conduct.”
Even so, the judge took issue with paragraph 36 of the indictment, struck it as inappropriate, and reserved ruling on “potentially privileged information contained in the Superseding Indictment,” noting that Trump is separately seeking to suppress those details.
“Defendants also forcefully challenge the Superseding Indictment’s inclusion of substantial information characterized by Defendant Trump as protected by the attorney-client and/or work product privileges,” a footnote said. “Because that issue is the subject of a pending motion to suppress, the Court elects to reserve ruling on the potential striking of those allegations.”
Paragraph 36 of the superseding indictment told of a time in 2021 several months after Trump’s presidency that he showed off a “classified map” to his political action committee representative while at his club in New Jersey, seemingly to criticize President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, an exit that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members in a suicide bombing attack in Kabul as evacuation efforts were underway.
“During the meeting, TRUMP commented that an ongoing military operation in Country B was not going well. TRUMP showed the PAC Representative a classified map of Country B and told the PAC Representative that he should not be showing the map to the PAC Representative and to not get too close,” the indictment had said. “The PAC Representative did not have a security clearance or any need-to-know classified information about the military operation.”
Cannon decided that the paragraph should not have been included in the indictment. Though she expressed “concerns” about the special counsel’s “decision to include in a charging document an extensive narrative account of his or her view of the facts, especially in cases of significant public interest,” she did not hand the defense a big win.
“Notwithstanding these concerns, given the rigorous standard for applying Rule 7(d), the Court exercises its discretion, with one exception below, not to order the ‘striking’ of allegations requested by Defendants, at least not as this stage, because Defendants have not clearly shown that the challenged allegations are flatly irrelevant or prejudicial,” the judge wrote.
But when one motion to dismiss fails, another rises up to take its place.
Trump’s defense on Monday additionally requested that Cannon toss the indictment and “suppress all evidence seized” by the FBI during the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, claiming that the feds destroyed “important exculpatory evidence relating to the locations of the allegedly classified documents at issue.”
The motion, alleging evidence spoliation and violations of Trump’s due process rights, claimed that Jack Smith is aiding President Biden’s “election-interference mission”:
The prosecution team destroyed exculpatory evidence supporting one of the most basic defenses available to President Trump in response to the politically motivated charges in this case. The Special Counsel’s Office has wrongfully alleged that President Trump was aware of the contents of boxes in August 2022, where those boxes were packed by others in the White House and moved to Florida in January 2021. The fact that the allegedly classified documents were buried in boxes and comingled with President Trump’s personal effects from his first term in office strongly supported the defense argument that he lacked knowledge and culpable criminal intent with respect to the documents at issue. Any proximity between allegedly classified documents and other dated materials from years before the move, such as letters and newspapers, would have further strengthened this argument. The prosecution team’s instructions to agents who executed the raid essentially acknowledged these propositions, and directed the agents to take care to document the location of both seized items and potentially privileged materials.
The post Judge Cannon strikes allegation that Trump showed off classified map and expresses ‘concerns’ about Jack Smith approach, as defense immediately files another motion to dismiss first appeared on Law & Crime.
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Author: Matt Naham
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