Judge nullifies paragraph of Trump’s confidential documents indictment, but denies request to dismiss charges

WASHINGTON – The federal judge who presides over the case of classified documents against former President Donald Trump and two of his associates withdrew a paragraph from the indictment on Monday but denied a defense request to dismiss some of the allegations.

The paragraph concerns allegations that Trump, in 2021 and no longer president, showed a confidential map of a foreign country to a representative of his political action committee while discussing a military operation that he said was not going well.

Defense lawyers said the paragraph was prejudicial because it was not related to any crime charged in the indictment, which accuses Trump of illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon agreed Monday that the inclusion of the language in the indictment was “not appropriate.”

The decision has minimal practical effect on the case, as Cannon left the rest of the indictment intact, denying in his 14-page order a request to dismiss any of the actual charges. However, even as she rejected the defense’s attempt to throw multiple charges, she rebuked Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team for including language in the indictment that she said was “legally unnecessary to serve the function of an indictment” and for creating “debatable confusion” in some of the wording.

A spokesman for Smith declined to comment Monday night.

The motion to dismiss the charges is one of the multiple requests and pre-trial disputes that had been piling up before Cannon for months, hindering the progress of the case and leading the judge last month to indefinitely postpone a trial that was scheduled for May 20 in Fort Pierce, Florida.

She has scheduled additional arguments for later this month, including a challenge by Trump to the legality and funding of Smith’s appointment as special counsel by the Justice Department last year.

The delays in the case are all the more surprising given that many legal experts have found the classified documents charge to be extremely straightforward in its claims that Trump illegally accumulated confidential documents of his presidency at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and obstructed the FBI’s efforts to recover them.

The accusation is one of the four criminal cases Trump faces as he seeks to reclaim the White House. He was convicted last month of all 34 criminal charges in the hush money case in New Yorkbut it appears unlikely that the other three cases will come to trial before the November presidential election, in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.

The defendants in this particular motion sought to dismiss more than half a dozen counts in the indictment, which also accuses Trump of conspiring with valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira to hide confidential government files.

The defendants contested charges related to obstruction and false statements that they considered duplicative and, in some cases, prejudicial.

But Cannon said in a Monday order that “the identified deficiencies, even if they create some arguable confusion, are permitted by law, raise evidentiary challenges not appropriate for decision at this time, and/or do not require dismissal, even if they are technically deficient, then provided that the jury is properly instructed and presented with adequate verdict forms as to the alleged conduct of each Defendant.

The judge has already rejected several other requests to dismiss the case, including one that suggested Trump was authorized under a statute known as Presidential Records Act keep the documents with him after he left the White House and designate them as his personal files.