Special Counsel Withdraws From Case Against Trump Documents Co-defendants

Special counsel Jack Smith in Washington on Aug. 1, 2023. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The special counsel who had led two federal cases against President-elect Donald Trump indicated on Monday in court filings that he is transferring the classified documents case against two co-defendants to a local U.S. attorney’s office

In a court filing, special counsel Jack Smith said he is moving to “withdraw” five attorneys from the case who were “associated with the special counsel’s office” in the case against co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, who were charged alongside the president-elect.

“The special counsel has now referred this case to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, which has separately entered an appearance,” the filing said.

Nauta, who is Trump’s valet, and de Oliveira, the manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida, were accused by prosecutors of hiding boxes of records from federal investigators. They face charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements to investigators, as well as various charges connected to concealing documents. Both pled not guilty to the charges.

After Trump’s election victory in November, Smith said he would not pursue an appeal of a federal judge’s decision in July to dismiss the classified documents case. At the same time, Smith’s office dropped its case against Trump brought in Washington that separately accused him of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Smith said that he dropped his appeal and case against Trump because of a decades-long Department of Justice rule that prohibits prosecuting a sitting president.

In the documents case, Trump pled not guilty on dozens of counts as prosecutors alleged that he mishandled classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021 and obstructed federal officials. FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and obtained boxes of documents.

Trump has said that both federal cases against him were politically motivated and designed to harm his chances for reelection. In several media appearances during the campaign cycle, Trump said he would end the Smith cases and fire him.

“I persevered, against all odds, and WON,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social last month after Smith moved to drop the cases.

The president-elect also said, “These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”

In court papers indicating he would drop the election case, Smith’s team wrote that the DOJ had found that the Office of Legal Counsel’s “opinions concerning the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”

“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind,“ his filing said. ”Based on the Department’s interpretation of the Constitution, the Government moves for dismissal without prejudice.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, based in Washington, quickly granted Smith’s motion to dismiss the matter. In the classified documents appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit similarly complied by dropping Trump from the case.