Left: Jack Smith speaks about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Aug. 1, 2023, at a Department of Justice office in Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File). Center: Attorney General Merrick Garland arrives for a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Friday, April 14, 2023, on an international drug trafficking enforcement action (AP Photo/Susan Walsh). Right: Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before departing Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 6, 2024, in New York (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, Pool).
As the house built by Jack Smith is slowly dismantled, some House Democrats are looking to preserve the documentation — and urging the U.S. Department of Justice to take extraordinary measures.
In a Wednesday letter, House Judiciary Democrats urged U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to release, in full, the second volume of the special counsel report regarding President-elect Donald Trump.
“The American people now deserve the opportunity to read Volume 2 of Special Counsel Smith’s report, which explains how President Trump knowingly retained hundreds of presidential and highly classified records at his Mar-a-Lago club and then deliberately defied subpoenas, obstructed law enforcement, hid evidence, and lied about his continuing retention of these records,” the letter reads. “It is in the very nature of American democracy that the people have a right to know of the public actions of their public officials, and it is essential to the rule of law that Justice.”
The Democrats who signed on to the letter are apparently willing to let the rule of law lapse on the remaining co-defendants in the extant Mar-a-Lago case in order to make sure the report is released this week.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Waltine “Walt” Nauta, Trump’s personal valet, and Carlos de Oliveira, Mar-a-Lago’s chief of maintenance, have repeatedly argued against releasing the second volume. Nauta and De Oliveira, who still face charges, say the report contains “highly prejudicial information” and that publicizing such information would be a violation of their due process rights.
The first volume of Smith’s report, released earlier this week, is related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. This version of the report has two passing mentions to the Mar-a-Lago case that do not implicate Nauta and De Oliveira. The second volume concerns allegations that Trump and others mishandled classified documents.
The judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, has been receptive to keeping the second volume of the Smith report under wraps. In a ruling last week, she found the second volume “expressly and directly concerns” the ongoing “criminal proceeding” against Nauta and De Oliveira — and cautioned that its release “would be inconsistent with [their] fair trial rights.”
Now, most House Judiciary Democrats would like to throw the baby out in order to get a glimpse at what lurks in the bathwater.
To that end, the Wednesday letter advises Garland to simply drop the charges against Nauta and De Oliveira — in the name of public access.
“As Attorney General, it is incumbent upon you to take all necessary steps to ensure the report is released before the end of your tenure, including, if necessary, by simply dismissing the remaining criminal charges against Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira,” the letter goes on.
The Democrats promoting the full-on end of the criminal case frame the issue as a way to salvage the report from a fait accompli.
“To the extent that such a decision to dismiss these cases might encourage these defendants to keep enabling the corruption of their superiors, those concerns are outweighed by the many indications that Mr. Trump will simply end the prosecutions against his coconspirators upon taking office anyway and then instruct his DOJ to permanently bury this report,” the letter continues.
Democrats, led by ranking member Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, prognosticate a bit in their letter about what might be expected from the highly sought-after second volume of the report.
From the letter, at length (emphasis in original):
Based on a review of court filings by the Special Counsel, this report presumably not only outlines the evidence supporting the 40 felony counts against Mr. Trump related to willfully hiding and mishandling extremely sensitive national defense information, but also explains why President-elect Trump retained and concealed classified documents and what he intended to do with those materials, neither of which was included in the indictment. It is essential that the American people and Congress understand how Mr. Trump mishandled our nation’s most sensitive classified information, especially because he will be sworn in as Commander-in-Chief and take leadership of our national security apparatus in just five days.
The DOJ, for their part, has suggested, for at least some specially-placed members of Congress, that no guesswork is necessary with regard to the requested volume.
Also on Wednesday, in a court filing, Garland’s lieutenants told Cannon that she simply “lacks the authority to intrude on the Attorney General’s prerogative” to release the second volume to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. This, the DOJ says, is because Garland has wide latitude to manage his interactions with Congress as he sees fit. Meanwhile, Nauta and De Oliveira say even this kind of disclosure is too much.
Cannon set a hearing for Jan. 17, to deal with those arguments.
Still, most Judiciary Democrats would like the public to see the report in full — and they are ready to let Nauta and De Oliveira off the hook.
“We obviously do not condone the sycophantic, delinquent, and criminal behavior that Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira are charged with,” the letter continues. “However, Donald Trump was plainly the mastermind of this deception operation to conceal and abuse classified material, a fact made clear by his being charged with 32 counts of willfully retaining these classified documents, while his co-defendants were charged with lesser offenses related to obstructing the investigation, largely at Mr. Trump’s direction.”
The letter was signed by almost every Democratic Party member on the House Judiciary Committee; the lone Democratic Party holdout on the committee is Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz.
“The public interest, however, now demands that the President-elect must not escape accountability to the American people,” the letter concludes. “Accordingly, to the extent the tangential charges against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira stand in the way of the overriding imperative of transparency and truth, the interests of justice demand that their cases be dismissed now so that the entirety of Special Counsel Smith’s report can be released to the American people.”
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