(CN) — U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled a new hearing in the classified documents case involving former President Trump as the Department of Justice sought to sideline a defense attorney it claimed has divided loyalties.
Federal prosecutors argued at a hearing Thursday that Stanley Woodward Jr. could not effectively defend Donald Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta, since he previously represented a Mar-a-Lago IT specialist who has become a key government witness in the high-profile case.
Woodward’s loyalties must remain with his former client, Assistant Special Prosecutor David Harbach told Cannon, meaning he cannot ethically cross-examine the IT specialist or impugn his integrity in Nauta’s defense.
“This is not an arcane proposition we conjured out of thin air,” Harbach said at the hearing.
However, Cannon, a Trump appointee, admonished prosecutors for blindsiding Woodward with unexpected arguments at the hearing in Fort Pierce, Florida. Harbach acknowledged the government had not asked for Woodward’s role in the defense to be curtailed in briefs filed before the so-called Garcia hearing.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in U.S. v. Garcia, a narcotics case brought against several Houston police officers in 1975, that a defendant has a right to counsel of his or her choice, even where conflict may exist, but the defendant must “knowingly and intelligently” waive the disqualification.
Cannon issued an order late Monday asking prosecutors to file a supplemental brief outlining their arguments by Wednesday. A new hearing is scheduled for Friday.
At Thursday’s hearing, Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at Mar-a-Lago who is accused of obstructing the investigation into classified documents improperly stored at the resort, chose to waive the potential conflicts presented by his attorney, John Irving, who has represented three witnesses in the case.
Nauta was expected to be advised of Woodward’s potential conflicts and do the same, but the government’s arguments for limiting the defense attorney’s role added an unexpected wrinkle.
Woodward, a Washington-based attorney with Brand Woodward Law, has represented at least seven witnesses in the case, prosecutors say. However, only the IT specialist is expected to testify at Trump’s trial in May, where the former president will face charges he mishandled classified documents he retained after leaving the White House.
The IT specialist, identified only as “Trump Employee 4” in court documents, was represented by Woodward when he told a grand jury in March that he had no information about the classified documents.
That changed in June after a similar Garcia hearing was held for the IT specialist in the District of Columbia. A federal judge appointed the employee a federal public defender to advise him at the hearing.
After discussing his case with the public defender, he changed his testimony, telling authorities De Oliveira had pressured him to delete incriminating security footage at Mar-a-Lago last summer.
A superseding indictment filed in July added new obstruction-related charges based on the testimony.
Friday is also the deadline for discovery motions in the case, but Trump’s defense attorneys asked for more time in a motion filed Sunday, blaming “failures” by the prosecutors to produce evidence.
The Department of Justice has agreed to an Oct. 30 deadline.
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