DOJ Moves to Drop Classified Documents Appeal Against Trump’s Co-defendants

Carlos De Oliveira (L), a property manager for former then-former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, arrives with his lawyer John Irving at the James Lawrence King Federal Justice Building in Miami on July 31, 2023. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion on Jan. 29 to voluntarily dismiss its appeal in the Florida classified documents case against President Donald Trump that has reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

“The United States of America moves to voluntarily dismiss its appeal with prejudice,” a filing with the appeals court reads.

Hayden O’Byrne, the interim U.S. attorney in Miami, noted in the filing that the government had conferred with counsel for two remaining appellees, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who were named as defendants along with Trump.

The motion was made after former special counsel Jack Smith’s office asked the court to dismiss the appeal as it related to Trump—something the court granted last year.

The DOJ was in the process of appealing Florida Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the classified documents case. Cannon had ruled that Smith was unlawfully appointed.

Both Smith and Jay Bratt, a counterintelligence official who worked on the case, left the department before Trump took office on Jan. 20.

The DOJ’s motion was made after Cannon blocked the release of the second volume of Smith’s report on the classified documents case.

Cannon sided with an emergency motion brought by Nauta and De Oliveira. The previous administration had sought to allow certain members of Congress to read a redacted version of the report. In her Jan. 21 order, Cannon said that “there is certainly a reasonable likelihood that review by members of Congress as proposed will result in public dissemination of all or part of Volume II.”

“That reasonable likelihood risks substantial prejudice to the due process rights of Defendants, who remain subject to the protective order in this case,” she said.

The motion is part of a wave of changes that have occurred under the new administration, which has expressed an interest in halting what it has called weaponization of the department and politically based prosecutions.

On Jan. 29, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the nomination of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for U.S. attorney general.

She said in 2023: “When Republicans take back the White House ... the Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted—the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.”

Acting Attorney General James McHenry has already fired multiple DOJ officials “who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” according to a spokesperson for the DOJ.

TJ Muscaro and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.