Judges issue dueling orders on access to classified material in Trump cases

Two judges overseeing different federal cases against former President Donald Trump issued strikingly different interpretations minutes apart from each other about access to sensitive material.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected the Trump legal team’s motion for access to a tranche of the government’s evidence against the president that is marked classified in the case accusing the ex-president of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

Meanwhile, in south Florida, US District Judge Aileen Cannon, declined to opt for a more blanket restriction on access Trump’s co-defendants’ legal counsel have to some of the classified information in question for the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

“So again, we are left with the [the special council’s] broad and unconvincing theory, which is that the Court must change the meaning of the word ‘defendant’ to mean, essentially, ‘defense attorney to the exclusion of defendant.’ The court refuses to do so,” Cannon wrote in a 15-page order.

Cannon’s order was specific to Trump’s valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago maintenance chief Carlos De Oliveira, who have also been indicted in the classified documents case.

Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, has generally been seen as friendly to the former president’s legal team in the Mar-a-Lago case.US District Court for the Southe/AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump has blasted the slew of indictments against him as a “witch hunt” and election interference.AFP via Getty Images

Cannon further directed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team to make requests for deleting portions of files from classified discovery “from any defendant” during a pre-trial motion.

“This order does not authorize the disclosure of any classified information to any defendant beyond the terms of the existing protective orders,” she stressed.

Smith’s office is spearheading both the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago documents cases.

During a hearing on the timeline for that case Wednesday, Cannon also signaled that she was sympathetic to Trump’s push to delay the trial, which is slated for May 2024.

“I’m having a hard time seeing how this work can be accomplished in this compressed time frame,” Cannon said.

Trump, 77, is scheduled to head to a separate trial on March 4, just one day before the Super Tuesday presidential primary contest, for the Jan. 6 case against him being adjudicated by Chutkan.

In her order Wednesday, Chutkan agreed that federal prosecutors can withhold “certain classified information” from Trump’s defense team.

Judge Tanya Chutkan has spared Donald Trump’s legal team in the past. Recently, she reimposed a partial gag order against the former president.AP

“The government is authorized to withhold from discovery the classified information specified in its motion, and to provide the unclassified summary substitution specified in its motion to the defense,” Chutkan wrote in a five-page order.

Last month, Trump’s legal team sought “attorneys’-eyes-only” access to the classified material.

Documents with classification markings holed up at Mar-a-Lago. AP
Boxes of records stashed in a bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as seen in the indictment.AP

The exact nature of the classified material in the Jan. 6 case is not fully known. The classified documents in the Mar-a-Lago case largely pertains to the records Trump allegedly hoarded from his presidency after departing the White House.

In both cases, Chutkan and Cannon grappled with the Classified Information Procedures Act (CHIPA).

“At the outset, it bears emphasis that the defense identifies no case in which any court has ordered the relief they seek here, and this court is aware of none,” Chutkan wrote in her order.

“Aside from the particular provisions of CIPA, it is understood that Congress in CIPA did not intend to weaken or broaden a criminal defendant’s rights or to alter preexisting standards related to the use or admissibility of information in such cases” Cannon wrote.

Trump is facing a total of 91 criminal counts including four counts in the Jan. 6 case, 40 counts in the Mar-a-Lago classified document case, 34 counts out of Manhattan, and 13 counts in the Georgia election case.

The former president has vehemently denied wrongdoing across the board and pleaded not guilty in all pending cases.