Aileen Cannon, the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case, on Monday ordered the unsealing of documents filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who had asked that they be kept under wraps because they could reveal his trial strategy.
After receiving a subpoena from the Department of Justice (DOJ) last year to turn over classified documents that the former president took from the White House after leaving office in 2021 that were believed to be at his Mar-a-Lago home, Trump and his team returned only some of them.
An FBI raid in August 2022 found hundreds more documents in boxes still stored there. Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, is facing charges of withholding and concealing from federal investigators classified and top-secret material. He pleaded not guilty and has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
On Monday, Cannon ordered the unsealing of documents filed by Smith in the case, making them public, adding that she was “mindful of the strong presumption in favor of public access to judicial documents.”
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On November 22, Smith asked that the filing be kept under seal because it contained government plans to delete “highly sensitive classified information” from sharable discovery.
Newsweek reached out to Trump and DOJ via email for comment.
Trump has been charged with retaining national defense information, meaning his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), which governs how the documents can be used in court. Smith has expressed concern about disclosing information related to a CIPA motion filed by the government.
However, Cannon, who was nominated by Trump in 2020, ruled that there was nothing secret.
Cannon said that Smith had not provided “sufficient justification” for his filing because the motions did not “contain or otherwise reveal classified information.”
Additionally, a Friday court document revealed the response to the initial order of unsealing in which Smith’s team agreed to unseal the documents, as requested by the defense, though prosecutors insisted on some redactions.
“The defendants did not oppose the Government’s request, but reserved the right to challenge them later,” Smith wrote, adding that a full unsealing could disclose classified defense counsel information about how government’s CIPA motion.
“This is the same information that the Government proposed redacting. Because the Court rejected that position and ordered the Government to provide unredacted versions of the two docket entries to defense counsel, there is no justification for keeping them from the public.”
This comes after Cannon refused to set a deadline for when Trump must list the classified documents he intends to use in his trial and said she would revisit the trial schedule in March.
In November, Cannon denied Smith’s request that she set a deadline for Trump’s CIPA application, for which a defendant is required to disclose what classified information will be used at trial. Cannon said the deadline will be set in March 2024, likely pushing back the trial date.
Uncommon Knowledge
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