Judge in Trump’s classified files case agrees to redact witness names, granting prosecution request
WASHINGTON — The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump on Tuesday granted a request from prosecutors aimed at protecting the identities of potential government witnesses.
But U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon categorically refused to block the disclosure of witness statements, saying there was no basis for such a “sweeping” and “broad” restriction on their inclusion in pretrial proceedings.
The 24-page order centers on a dispute between special counsel Jack Smith’s team and Trump’s lawyers over how much information about witnesses and their pre-trial statements can be made public. The disagreement, which had been pending for weeks, was one of several that had piled up at Cannon and slowed the pace of the case against Trump — one of four prosecutions he faces.
The case still does not have a final trial date, although both sides have said they could be ready this summer. Cannon, who previously faced blistering criticism over her decision to grant Trump’s request for an independent referee to review documents obtained during an FBI investigation into Mar-a-Lago, expressed her continued skepticism about the government’s prosecution theory clearly, saying Tuesday that the case raised “still developing and somewhat muddled questions.”
By reconsidering an earlier order and siding with prosecutors on protecting witness identities, Cannon likely avoided a dramatic worsening of tensions with Smith’s team, which last week filed a separate order from the judge called it ‘fundamentally flawed’.
The issue surfaced in January when defense attorneys filed, in partially unredacted form, a motion seeking to require prosecutors to turn over a trove of documents that they said would strengthen their claim that the government Biden had tried to “weaponize” the government by indicting Trump.
Defense attorneys sought permission to file the request, which included as attachments information they obtained from prosecutors in largely unredacted form. But prosecutors objected to unsealing the motion to the extent that it would reveal the identity of a potential government witness.
Cannon subsequently granted the defense’s request to file the motion and its exhibits in unredacted form, so long as witnesses’ personal identification information remained sealed. Smith’s team asked her to reconsider, saying witnesses could be exposed to threats and intimidation if publicly identified.
In agreeing Tuesday that the witnesses’ names would remain redacted, she wrote: “Although the record clearly shows that the Special Counsel could and should have raised his current arguments earlier, the Court, after a full review of those newly presented arguments, to reconsider his previous decision.”
Still, the order wasn’t a complete victory for prosecutors.
Cannon rejected a request from Smith’s team to disregard the contents of all witness statements, except for information that could be used to identify witnesses.
“With regard to legal authority, the cases cited in the Special Prosecutor’s documents do not support this sweeping request; nor do they appear to have been presented as such,” Cannon wrote. “And based on the Court’s independent investigation, granting this request would be unprecedented: the Court cannot find a single case—high-profile or otherwise—in which a court has approved anything remotely resembling the sweeping relief sought here asked.”