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The federal judge overseeing the case involving classified documents against former President Donald Trump and two of his associates denied a request on Monday to dismiss some of the charges in the indictment.
The defendants tried to dismiss more than half of the 41 charges in the indictment.
The charges accuse Trump of unlawfully withholding classified documents from his presidency and of conspiring with valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager to hide the sensitive files from the government, the Associated Press reported.
The defendants challenged allegations related to obstruction and false statements. However, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon wrote in an order Monday 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.”
Cannon has already rejected multiple other motions to dismiss the case, including one that suggested that Trump was authorized under a statute known as the Presidential Records Act to keep the documents with him after he left the White House and to designate them as his personal files.
The judge has previously denied several motions to dismiss the case, including one arguing that Trump was permitted under the Presidential Records to retain the documents after leaving office and designate them as his personal files.
Late last month, special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges, informed Cannon that some evidence is no longer in its “original, intact” form, prompting outrage from Trump.
Smith’s prosecutors informed Cannon that there are some boxes where the “order of items within that box is not the same” as they appeared in digital scans of materials in the wake of the FBI retrieving them from Trump’s Florida resort home in August 2022.
Smith’s office acknowledged that this statement was “inconsistent” with what the government had previously informed the court. Initially, they had stated that the only alterations made were the removal of some classified documents and the insertion of placeholders in their stead.
The filing addressed defendant Nauta’s request for additional time to learn the contents and organization of the documents seized. It specifically identified which documents were in which boxes and the correct sequence of the documents within those boxes. Smith’s filing noted that the current order of the boxes doesn’t match scans of them that were made earlier, which is a problem, according to legal experts.
“Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants’ review of the boxes,” the Justice Department prosecutors wrote.
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the prosecutor’s filing said.
Smith’s prosecutors then admitted they had misled the court.
“The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the document said.
“There are several possible explanations, including the above-described instances in which the boxes were accessed, as well as the size and shape of certain items in the boxes possibly leading to movement of items,” the filing said.
“For example, the boxes contain items smaller than standard paper such as index cards, books, and stationary, which shift easily when the boxes are carried, especially because many of the boxes are not full,” prosecutors wrote.
However, the details are a vital part of the prosecution’s case against Trump, legal experts have said.
