Judge Aileen Cannon (U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee), Donald Trump, (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)
The federal judge presiding over the former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago criminal case dealt Special Counsel Jack Smith a blow on Monday by rejecting the prosector’s bid to preserve “grand jury secrecy” through sealed filings.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, struck the special counsel’s sealed filings from the docket and ordered public responses from both alleged co-conspirator Waltine Nauta and from Special Counsel Smith on the “legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district.”
Cannon revealed that the special counsel moved for a Garcia hearing, in order to deal with “potential conflicts of interests that may arise” from Nauta’s lawyer Stanley Woodward Jr.’s “prior and current representation of three individuals the Government may call to testify at the trial of his client.” The judge also revealed that Jack Smith sought leave to file a sealed “supplement” to “facilitate the Court’s inquiry.”
But Judge Cannon was apparently not impressed with the special counsel’s contention that the “supplement” needed to remain out of public view in order to “comport with grand jury secrecy.” Cannon called that statement “conclusory” and determined that Smith “plainly fail[ed] to satisfy the burden of establishing a sufficient legal or factual basis to warrant sealing the motion and supplement.”
Prosecutor Jack Smith (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, Pool)
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As a result, Nauta was ordered to publicly respond to the motion for a Garcia hearing “on or before August 17.” The judge said the response “shall address” the “legal propriety” of the aforementioned use of an “out-of-district grand jury proceeding” in connection with the Mar-a-Lago case.
It’s unclear where that grand jury sits, but some legal experts have speculated in the past that Smith might consider a backup plan in the form of a separate case in New Jersey — in the event that Cannon derailed the proceedings with her rulings. That speculation arose because the initial Espionage Act indictment alleged (without charging) that Trump showed off classified documents in July 2021 at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., “during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance.” It’s otherwise known that there’s a grand jury in Washington, D.C., where the former president was indicted last week for “perpetrat[ing] three criminal conspiracies” when he “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting [2020] election results.”
Judge Cannon ordered Special Counsel Smith to respond on the “out-of-district grand jury” issue “on or before August 22.” She invited, but did not require, Nauta’s co-defendants Trump and Carlos de Oliveira to “file briefs of their own” — whether separately or together — “related to the grand jury issue” by August 17.
Read the order here.
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