CNN
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President Donald Trump’s administration is ending the case against his former co-defendants in the classified documents investigation brought by former special counsel Jack Smith.
The Justice Department has stopped pursuing an appeal brought by Smith to revive the criminal charges against Trump’s employees. The appeal had also sought to defend the attorney general’s ability to appoint special prosecutors — a long-held authority that Trump’s administration has sought to undermine.
Last summer, a federal judge dismissed the case against Walt Nauta, who has served for years as Trump’s valet, and Carlos De Oliveira, who worked as a property manager at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
CNN reported earlier this month that Trump was not planning to pardon Nauta and De Oliveira. Sources familiar with the strategy said a pardon would “connote guilt.”
The appeals court has not yet signed off on the Justice Department’s request, which is in line with what the two co-defendants wanted as well.
The DOJ’s move on Wednesday marks one of the last actions needed to unwind the criminal cases against Trump. The department dropped the charges Trump himself faced after he became president-elect.
All three men had been charged in 2023 by Smith as part of his probe into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified information following his first term in the White House.
But the historic case was tossed out by district Judge Aileen Cannon last summer, with the Trump appointee ruling that Smith’s appointment by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland violated the Constitution. Cannon decided – splitting with several other court rulings – that Smith didn’t have the authority to bring a grand jury indictment, and that his office shouldn’t have been able to be funded without congressional appropriations.
At the time, Smith said prosecutors were keeping their case on classified documents alive against Nauta and De Oliveira, both of whom were accused of helping Trump obstruct the federal investigation into his alleged document mishandling.
Nauta was accused by Smith of assisting the then-former president in his alleged efforts to hide boxes of classified documents from a Trump attorney who was collecting them for a grand jury subpoena and of making false statements to investigators probing the documents’ whereabouts.
The charges brought by Smith against De Oliveira accused the former Mar-a-Lago employee of working alongside Trump and Nauta to obstruct the investigation by attempting to delete security footage from the estate sought through a grand jury subpoena.
Nauta and De Oliveira had both pleaded not guilty to the obstruction charges.
The Justice Department also on Wednesday dropped the case it brought in DC against former Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, with Trump praising the dismissal of the prosecution, which he called a “witch hunt,” on Truth Social.
Fortenberry was originally indicted in California on charges that he misled the FBI about illegal contributions to his campaign. His conviction there was overturned by an appeals court in 2023, which found it improper for the charges to have been brought in California, as Fortenberry’s allegedly false statements to the FBI occurred not in that state, but in DC and Nebraska.
Prosecutors brought a new indictment in DC last year and the case was set to go to trial this summer. Acting US Attorney Ed Martin in court filings Tuesday sought its dismissal “with prejudice,” which would foreclose prosecutors from bringing the charges in the future.
“Jeff and his family were forced to suffer greatly due to the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump said on Truth Social, appointing to the appeals court ruling that overturned the original conviction. “That Scam is now over, so Jeff and his family can go back to having a great life together, and be a part of our Country’s future as we MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional details.
