[President Trump’s administration is ending the case against his former co-defendants in the classified documents investigation brought by former special counsel Jack Smith. The Justice Department has stopped pursuing an appeal brought by Smith to revive the criminal charges against Trump’s employees. The appeal had also sought to defend the attorney general’s ability to appoint special prosecutors, a long-held authority that Trump’s administration has sought to undermine.
A federal judge had previously dismissed the case against Walt Nauta, who served as Trump’s valet, and Carlos De Oliveira, who worked as a property manager at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The Justice Department had brought the charges, which stemmed from Smith’s probe into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified information following his first term in the White House.
The appeals court has not yet signed off on the Justice Department’s request, which is in line with what the two co-defendants wanted. The DOJs move marks one of the last actions needed to unwind the criminal cases against Trump. The department dropped the charges against Trump himself after he became president-elect.
The case against Nauta and De Oliveira had accused them of helping Trump obstruct the federal investigation into his alleged document mishandling. Nauta was accused of assisting the then-former president in his alleged efforts to hide boxes of classified documents from a Trump attorney who was collecting them for a grand jury subpoena, and De Oliveira was accused of working alongside Trump and Nauta to obstruct the investigation by attempting to delete security footage from the estate sought through a grand jury subpoena.
The Justice Department also dropped the case against former Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry. Trump praised the dismissal, calling it a “witch hunt.” Fortenberry was originally indicted in California on charges that he misled the FBI about illegal contributions to his campaign, but his conviction was overturned by an appeals court. Prosecutors brought a new indictment in DC and the case was set to go to trial this summer.
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