The case would essentially come to an end on Wednesday when the Justice Department filed to discontinue its appeal of a federal court judgment dismissing the criminal charges against President Donald Trump’s erstwhile co-defendants in the secret materials case.
Then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had stated that the pending appeal might affect the due process rights of co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliviera, which is why he would not make special counsel Jack Smith’s report on the criminal case he had brought against Trump publicly available.
Hayden O’Byrne submitted the Justice Department’s move to withdraw the appeal with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. According to the Miami Herald, O’Byrne was appointed as the Southern District of Florida’s acting U.S. attorney this week.
In his filing, O Byrne requests that the circuit court reject the DOJ’s appeal “with prejudice,” meaning that it cannot be resurrected later. Smith left earlier this month, and the matter was given to his office.
According to the filing notes, De Oliveira and Nauta “do not object to the voluntary dismissal.” For the Justice Department’s appeal to be formally dismissed, the appeals court must accept its motion.
Regarding how the action might impact the likelihood that Smith’s report would be made public, a department official declined to comment.
Attorneys for Nauta and De Oliveira, as well as Trump and his team, had fiercely opposed the report’s publication.
Last year, the case against Trump, his aide Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago employee De Oliveira was dropped by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was a Trump nominee.
The three were charged with hindering the subsequent federal investigation and allegedly participating in a plot to assist Trump keep highly classified papers that were wrongfully in his possession after he departed the White House in 2021. The three had entered not guilty pleas.
The present appeal began when Cannon threw out the lawsuit in July, determining that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unlawful. Citing advice from its Office of Legal Counsel that an executive branch agency cannot bring charges against a sitting president, the Justice Department abandoned its case against Trump following his election victory.
Smith’s other case against Trump, which accused him of conspiring against the United States for his attempts to maintain his position of power after losing the 2020 presidential election, was also dropped as a result of that advice.
Smith’s report on the case was made public earlier this month, and Trump had no co-defendants.The majority of the information was taken from the case’s public court records.
The second volume of the study, which focused on the case of the classified papers, was intended to be blocked by Trump, Nauta, and De Oliveira.
Although Garland consented to hold off on releasing that volume until the appeal was resolved, Cannon prevented him from sharing the findings with congressional leaders.
There is undoubtedly a plausible chance that, upon review by members of Congress as proposed, all or part of Volume II will be made public given the intense public interest in this criminal case and the lack of any legally binding restrictions on the proposed disclosure, she wrote.
Cannon continued by saying that she had read the report, which includes extensive and in-depth details on the case against Trump, a large portion of which has not been made public in court papers.
Before Trump took office, House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee had pushed Garland to drop the appeal involving Nauta and De Oliveira so the findings could be made public by the attorney general.
They stated that the numerous signs that Mr. Trump will simply terminate the prosecutions against his co-conspirators as soon as he takes office and then direct his DOJ to forever bury this report outweigh their worries that dropping the case could allow for more wrongdoing.