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(Picture 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 all types of bullshit on the partitions of Decide 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 received a take a look at a number of bonkers filings yesterday. In response to an especially pissed off movement 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 by which he “for the primary time made quite a few false factual assertions and meritless arguments that might 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 one million guys who stored 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 had been meritless as a result of, amongst different issues, his determination 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. Moderately, he lied to the FBI after which refused to testify to the grand jury, and so “the Authorities’s determination 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 had been “flat-out false” and/or “deeply flawed.” However extra to the purpose, these allegations had been far too late, since he failed to incorporate them within the authentic movement, and it’s sort of black letter regulation that you would be able to’t add new stuff in a reply transient.
However Woodward and Nauta have a solution 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 in opposition to former President Donald J. Trump,’ has concerned a lot of, ‘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 varied different factors within the case, and so … we’re cool, proper? (Presumably this can be 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 consumer to cooperate.)
The federal government demanded that the brand new arguments be rejected as premature, or, within the various, that or not it’s permitted to file a surreply. To which Nauta, making an incredible 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 ought 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 precise to complement his briefing of the identical as extra proof of the motivation for Mr. Nauta’s prosecution involves mild.
After all, Decide Cannon granted the request to file a surreply, as soon as once more permitting the defendants to pratfall their means by means of this case with out penalty.
US v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she produces the Legislation and Chaos substack and podcast.
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