(CN) — A federal judge denied Donald Trump’s co-defendants access to classified evidence as they prepare for trial in the Mar-a-Lago case.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon said in an order filed Tuesday night that the materials would not help in the defense of Carlos De Oliveira and Walt Nauta, who are charged with conspiring with their boss to hide boxes of sensitive records at the resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, made her decision after holding several closed hearings and reviewing the classified materials.
“The court finds that the special counsel has met his burden to withhold from defendants Nauta and De Oliveira personally all classified discovery produced to date,” the judge wrote, making one exception for a document tied to Nauta’s charges.
Trump was indicted last year on accusations he kept classified documents at his Florida resort after leaving the White House. Prosecutors say the former president and his employees conspired to hide the documents before federal authorities executed a search warrant in August 2022 at Mar-a-Lago.
FBI agents seized more than 100 documents with classified markings during the search, including papers that detailed the defense and weapon capabilities of the U.S. and its allies and possible plans for retaliation in response to a foreign attack, among other national secrets.
De Oliveira and Nauta are also accused of trying to pressure an IT specialist to delete incriminating security footage at the resort. The employee refused and has since become a government witness.
While defendants are typically granted access to evidence before trial, classified materials provide a rare exception. Under the 1980 Classified Information Procedures Act prosecutors can petition the court to exclude classified evidence from discovery.
Special counsel Jack Smith acknowledged Trump needed access to the materials to prepare his defense, but argued in a motion filed in September that the same was not true for his employees.
Smith's argument rested on charging differences.
The former president is accused of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, which requires the government to prove he possessed materials that contained “national defense information.”
One argument Trump could use at trial is that the records were not related to national defense. To raise that question, his attorneys need to know what the documents contain.
But prosecutors claimed the documents’ contents were irrelevant to proving the charges against De Oliveira and Nauta.
The employees are charged with conspiring to hide the classified materials from a grand jury. The substance of the documents doesn't matter — it’s enough to know they were subject to subpoena.
Cannon agreed with the prosecutors.
“Unlike the charges brought against Defendant Trump under [the Espionage Act], the document-related charges against Defendants Nauta and De Oliveira do not require proof that they willfully retained documents related to national defense,” she wrote in the order.
A scheduling conference is expected to be held Friday.
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