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(Photograph by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Photographs)
Shenanigans proceed within the Southern District of Florida the place Donald Trump’s co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, are throwing every kind of bullshit on the partitions of Choose Aileen Cannon’s courtroom and hoping that one thing will stick.
A number of of the paperwork have but to hit the docket, however in anticipation of this afternoon’s listening to on the motions to dismiss for vagueness/lenity/selective prosecution/rumspringa we obtained a take a look at a number of bonkers filings yesterday. In response to a particularly pissed off motion filed by the federal government on March 27, Nauta filed a reply in assist of his movement to dismiss on grounds of selective and vindictive prosecution during which he “for the primary time made quite a few false factual assertions and meritless arguments that would have been raised in his movement.”
In his first at-bat, Nauta’s lawyer Stan Woodward argued that it violates due course of to threaten to cost a witness if he doesn’t cooperate — which might be information to about 1,000,000 guys who saved their asses out of the clink by flipping on their bosses! — and ipso facto vindictive prosecution.
“In its response, the Authorities defined that Nauta’s arguments have been meritless as a result of, amongst different issues, his resolution to not testify earlier than the grand jury was not an invocation of his Fifth Modification rights,” Particular Counsel Jack Smith wrote, noting that Nauta wasn’t being punished for asserting a authorized proper. Relatively, he lied to the FBI after which refused to testify to the grand jury, and so “the Authorities’s resolution to cost him after he declined to cooperate didn’t quantity to vindictiveness as a matter of regulation.”
In response to the prosecutors, Nauta adopted up with a reply containing a number of “new factual allegations and theories of animus that he failed to say, a lot much less argue, in his opening movement” all of which have been “flat-out false” and/or “deeply flawed.” However extra to the purpose, these allegations have been far too late, since he failed to incorporate them within the unique movement, and it’s type of black letter regulation that you could’t add new stuff in a reply transient.
However Woodward and Nauta have an answer for this and it’s, uh …
Every of the problems was introduced in Mr. Nauta’s Movement and Reply in assist thereof, and, along with the factual circumstances pertinent thereto, none are new to the Courtroom or the SCO. See, e.g., Defs.’ Mot. to Compel at 53 (Jan. 16, 2024) (ECF No. 262) (citing Mem. Op., In re Press Utility for Unsealing of In re Grand Jury Subpoena, No. 42-gj-67 (Nov. 29, 2023) (“‘the classified-documents case towards former President Donald J. Trump,’ has concerned numerous, ‘attention-grabbing improvement[s]. . . involving protection counsel.’”)); see additionally Order 1-2 (Aug. 7, 2023) (ECF No. 101).
See, they talked concerning the factual allegations at numerous different factors within the case, and so … we’re cool, proper? (Presumably it is a reference to Woodward’s allegation that Jay Bratt, the DOJ counterintelligence head who’s main the Florida case, threatened him with retribution if he didn’t get his shopper to cooperate.)
The federal government demanded that the brand new arguments be rejected as premature, or, within the different, that it’s permitted to file a surreply. To which Nauta, making a terrific present of magnanimity, conceded.
The gravity of this prosecution can’t be understated [sic, and FFS]. Because the stakeholders to this litigation wrestle with each novel and profound authorized problems with utmost significance, it needs to be incumbent upon all to guarantee that the pursuit of justice stays paramount. To the extent the SCO has extra to say concerning the lack of a pretextual motive for Mr. Nauta’s prosecution, historical past deserves to know the identical. Accordingly, Mr. Nauta doesn’t oppose the submitting of a surreply in assist of the SCO’s opposition to this movement to dismiss for vindictive and/or selective prosecution, whereas reserving the best to complement his briefing of the identical as extra proof of the motivation for Mr. Nauta’s prosecution involves gentle.
After all, Choose Cannon granted the request to file a surreply, as soon as once more permitting the defendants to pratfall their manner by way of this case with out penalty.
US v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she produces the Regulation and Chaos substack and podcast.
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