DOJ drops appeal in Trump classified documents case, ending Jack Smith's cases

WASHINGTON (CN)  — The Justice Department moved to drop former special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against two of President Donald Trump’s co-defendants on Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to file an unopposed motion to dismiss an appeal of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling that the criminal case should be dismissed because Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional.

The move ends Smith’s case against Trump aide Walt Nauta and former Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira for their roles in Trump’s mishandling of classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate and obstructing the FBI’s efforts to retrieve them.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the case outright in July 2024, adopting a conservative legal theory — approved by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — that Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution’s appointment clause because the Senate did not approve him.

The dismissal, filed by U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of Florida Hayden O’Byrne, halts the theory’s movement before the 11th Circuit could consider its merits.

Nauta and De Oliveira were charged with attempting to conceal evidence that Trump brought hundreds of classified documents back to Mar-a-Lago when federal investigators subpoenaed him and searched the estate in June 2022.

De Oliveira’s attorney, John Irving of the Earth and Water Group, welcomed the dismissal in an emailed statement.

“Carlos should never have been charged in the first place, and I have zero doubt that he would have been acquitted at trial,” Irving said. “It’s nice to see the Justice Department using better judgment these days.”

Smith’s indictment detailed their alleged efforts to obstruct the investigation by moving the documents around the estate and attempting to delete CCTV footage vital to the case.

Following Trump’s November election, attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro attempted to use Nauta and De Oliveira’s pending case to block the release of Smith’s final reports in both the classified documents and election subversion cases.

Now Deputy Attorney General Blanche and Lauro, who defended Trump in both cases, petitioned former Attorney General Merrick Garland, Cannon, and the 11th Circuit before the inauguration, arguing that both volumes of the report would “illegally interfere” with the presidential transition.

Garland ultimately released the election subversion volume on Jan. 14 but said he would only transmit the classified documents volume to the Judiciary committees at the recommendation of Smith, acknowledging the potential prejudice Nauta and De Oliveira would face.

On Jan. 21, however, Cannon blocked the volume’s release to lawmakers, criticizing the Justice Department’s “startling” conduct and willingness to “gamble” with Nauta and De Oliveira’s rights by allowing the chairs and ranking members of either committee to view the report, a regular practice for special counsels.

Since Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, he has quickly moved to reshape the Justice Department in his image after sharply criticizing the nation’s top law enforcement agency for the classified documents case and the election subversion case in Washington, which he called a “weaponization” of the department.

In his first executive action upon officially returning to the Oval Office, Trump undercut the Justice Department’s prosecution of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the largest in the agency’s history. He issued mass pardons for the nearly 1,600 defendants and commuted the sentences of top leaders from the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, leading to their early release.

This past Monday, acting U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin ordered an internal review of his office’s handling of the Jan. 6 prosecutions.

According to an email obtained by The Washington Post, Martin said he was appointing Denise Cheung, chief of the Criminal Division, and John Hooks, chief of the Fraud, Public Corruption, and Civil Rights section, to investigate the office’s use of a felony obstruction charge, obstruction of an official proceeding.

The Supreme Court ruled in June 2024 that prosecutors had used the statute, created in the wake of the Enron scandal, too broadly and that it should only apply to explicit document destruction.

This past Monday, acting Attorney General James McHenry issued termination letters to more than a dozen officials who worked with Smith in the Trump federal cases. In the letters, McHenry wrote that he did not believe the prosecutors “could be trusted to faithfully implement the president’s agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the president.”

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