FORT PIERCE, Fla. — Lawyers for two of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case asked a judge on Friday to dismiss the charges against them.
Trump employee Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira are accused of conspiring with Trump to obstruct an FBI investigation into the hoarding of classified documents at the former president’s Palm Beach estate. All three have pleaded not guilty.
Attorneys for Nauta and De Oliveira asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon during a hearing on Friday afternoon to dismiss the charges they faced, a request that was opposed by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team, which filed charges against them and Trump . The judge did not immediately rule.
The two Trump aides are not accused of illegally storing the documents, but rather of helping Trump hinder the administration’s efforts to recover them.
Prosecutors say Nauta moved dozens of boxes from a storage unit at Mar-a-Lago to Trump’s home in 2022 in an apparent attempt to prevent their return to government, and that he and De Oliveira conspired with Trump to try to surveillance video to be deleted that showed the movement of the boxes and was sought by the FBI.
Defense attorneys have disputed that accusation. Lawyers for the men argue there is no allegation that either man knew the boxes contained sensitive government data.
“The superseding indictment does not allege that Mr. De Oliveira ever saw a classified document. There is no allegation that Mr. De Oliveira was aware of the presence of classified documents in the boxes he moved,” De Oliveira’s lawyers wrote in court filings, adding that there was no evidence he was aware of any government investigation in court. time he helped move boxes around the building.
“The only person who benefited from these actions was former President Trump,” Nauta’s attorney, Stanley Woodward, said in court Friday.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has separately filed multiple motions to dismiss the charges against him. Cannon has denied two that were raised last month — one that said the Espionage Act statute at the heart of the case was unconstitutionally vague, and another that alleged that Trump, under a 1978 law, called the Presidential Records Act, had the right to keep the classified files as his personal belongings after he left the White House following his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
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Tucker reported from Washington.