Heated hearing in classified documents case as lawyer for Trump co-defendant challenges prosecutors

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) A lawyer for Donald Trump's personal valet took aim at prosecutors' conduct in the classified documents case during a heated hearing Wednesday, the first since a judge postponed the trial indefinitely.

Stanley Woodward, Walt Nauta's attorney, said prosecutors targeted his client for prosecution after he refused to cooperate against Trump in the investigation. Nauta was indicted alongside Trump last year in a federal case accusing them of conspiring to hide boxes of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

The defense attorney also said a prosecutor in the case warned him earlier in the investigation that he had to be careful or he would spoil his candidacy for judge in Washington, D.C., a a comment that Woodward interpreted as intended to cause him to put pressure on Nauta. to assist in the investigation.

But David Harbach, a prosecutor on Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith's team who brought the case, called Woodward's allegations garbage and fantasy. He said statements attributed to his colleague Jay Bratt were taken out of context. Woodward said he would be willing to testify under oath about the exchange.

The meeting laid bare simmering tensions between the two sides in a case mired in delays and slowed by legal disputes that Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon has yet to resolve. The case, among four criminal charges against Trump, was scheduled to go to trial on May 20, but Cannon canceled the trial date earlier this month.

Woodward admitted to Cannon that there was insufficient evidence to dismiss the indictment on the grounds of vindictive prosecution. But he said it was enough for her to order prosecutors to release all communications they had about Nauta to see if any hostility existed.

He said he believed his client was only being prosecuted because he refused to testify against Trump and because he exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by refusing to testify. a second time before a grand jury.

There was a campaign to get Mr. Nauta to cooperate in the first federal prosecution of a former United States president and when he refused, they prosecuted him, Woodward told the judge. This is a violation of his constitutional rights.

Trump is the first former US president to face criminal trial. (CNN, GETTY, POOL, CHRISTINE CORNELL, STORMY DANIELS, AP IMAGES, CBS, JANE ROSENBERG, WPVI)

Prosecutor Harbach rejected Woodwards' arguments, saying it was common for defendants to be offered better treatment if they cooperated,

There is not the slightest evidence of animosity toward Mr. Nauta, Harbach said:

Trump was not present at the hearing. The presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.

The arguments came a day after a recently unsealed motion revealed that defense attorneys sought to exclude evidence from boxes of files that FBI agents seized during a search at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.

Defense attorneys argued in the motion that the search was unconstitutional and illegal and that the FBI affidavit filed to justify it was tainted by false statements.

Smith's team rejected each of these accusations and defended a measured, graduated investigative approach. The search warrant was obtained after investigators collected surveillance video showing what they said was a concerted effort to hide the boxes of classified documents inside the property.

The warrant was supported by a detailed affidavit establishing probable cause and omitting no material information. And the warrant provided plenty of guidance to the FBI agents who conducted the search. Trump identifies no plausible basis for suppressing the fruits of this research, prosecutors wrote.

The defense motion was filed in February but was made public Tuesday, with hundreds of pages of investigative documents filed in the Florida case.

These include a previously sealed opinion last year from the then-chief judge of the federal court in Washington, who said that Trump's lawyers, months after the FBI search at Mar-a -Lago, had turned over four additional documents bearing classification marks that were found in Trump's room.

This March 2023 opinion from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered a former lead Trump attorney in the case to comply with a grand jury subpoena and turn over documents to investigators, rejecting defense arguments that their cooperation was prohibited by attorney-client privilege and concluding that prosecutors had demonstrated prima facie that Trump had committed a crime.

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Tucker reported from Washington.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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