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(Photo by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images)
Shenanigans continue in the Southern District of Florida where Donald Trump’s co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, are throwing all kinds of bullshit at the walls of Judge Aileen Cannon’s courtroom and hoping that something will stick.
Several of the documents have yet to hit the docket, but in anticipation of this afternoon’s hearing on the motions to dismiss for vagueness/lenity/selective prosecution/rumspringa we got a look at several bonkers filings yesterday. According to an extremely pissed off motion filed by the government on March 27, Nauta filed a reply in support of his motion to dismiss on grounds of selective and vindictive prosecution in which he “for the first time made numerous false factual assertions and meritless arguments that could have been raised in his motion.”
In his first at-bat, Nauta’s lawyer Stan Woodward argued that it violates due process to threaten to charge a witness if he doesn’t cooperate — which would be news to about a million guys who kept their asses out of the clink by flipping on their bosses! — and ipso facto vindictive prosecution.
“In its response, the Government explained that Nauta’s arguments were meritless because, among other things, his decision not to testify before the grand jury was not an invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights,” Special Counsel Jack Smith wrote, noting that Nauta wasn’t being punished for asserting a legal right. Rather, he lied to the FBI and then refused to testify to the grand jury, and so “the Government’s decision to charge him after he declined to cooperate did not amount to vindictiveness as a matter of law.”
According to the prosecutors, Nauta followed up with a reply containing several “new factual allegations and theories of animus that he failed to mention, much less argue, in his opening motion” all of which were “flat-out false” and/or “deeply flawed.” But more to the point, these allegations were far too late, since he failed to include them in the original motion, and it’s kind of black letter law that you can’t add new stuff in a reply brief.
But Woodward and Nauta have an answer for this and it is, uh …
Each of the issues was presented in Mr. Nauta’s Motion and Reply in support thereof, and, in addition to the factual circumstances pertinent thereto, none are new to the Court or the SCO. See, e.g., Defs.’ Mot. to Compel at 53 (Jan. 16, 2024) (ECF No. 262) (citing Mem. Op., In re Press Application for Unsealing of In re Grand Jury Subpoena, No. 42-gj-67 (Nov. 29, 2023) (“‘the classified-documents case against former President Donald J. Trump,’ has involved a number of, ‘attention-grabbing development[s]. . . involving defense counsel.’”)); see also Order 1-2 (Aug. 7, 2023) (ECF No. 101).
See, they talked about the factual allegations at various other points in the case, and so … we’re cool, right? (Presumably this is a reference to Woodward’s allegation that Jay Bratt, the DOJ counterintelligence head who is leading the Florida case, threatened him with retribution if he didn’t get his client to cooperate.)
The government demanded that the new arguments be rejected as untimely, or, in the alternative, that it be permitted to file a surreply. To which Nauta, making a great show of magnanimity, conceded.
The gravity of this prosecution cannot be understated [sic, and FFS]. As the stakeholders to this litigation wrestle with both novel and profound legal issues of utmost importance, it should be incumbent upon all to assure that the pursuit of justice remains paramount. To the extent the SCO has more to say about the lack of a pretextual motive for Mr. Nauta’s prosecution, history deserves to know the same. Accordingly, Mr. Nauta does not oppose the filing of a surreply in support of the SCO’s opposition to this motion to dismiss for vindictive and/or selective prosecution, while reserving the right to supplement his briefing of the same as more evidence of the motivation for Mr. Nauta’s prosecution comes to light.
Of course, Judge Cannon granted the request to file a surreply, once again allowing the defendants to pratfall their way through this case without penalty.
US v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
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