FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A federal prosecutor on Wednesday angrily pushed again on allegations of vindictive prosecution and prosecutorial misconduct from 1 of former President Donald Trump‘s co-defendants in the categorized files scenario, contacting some of the statements “garbage” and “a fantasy.”
“That was tough to sit by,” prosecutor David Harbach claimed of attorney Stanley Woodward’s arguments to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that his customer, Walt Nauta, experienced been indicted as retaliation for not cooperating with the authorities.
“It is a garbage argument, to start out with,” Harbach stated, prior to pushing again on Woodward’s claims that a different prosecutor in unique counsel Jack Smith’s office environment had inappropriately sought to tension Woodward by bringing up his application for a judgeship in Washington, D.C., throughout a meeting.
“Mr. Woodward’s story about what transpired” at the August 2022 conference among Woodward and prosecutor Jay Bratt “is a fantasy,” Harbach stated. “It did not occur,” he said, incorporating that even if it did, it nevertheless would not fulfill the normal of a vindictive prosecution.
Beneath questioning from Cannon, Harbach, who was not in the conference, stated Woodward’s alleged offers from the assembly have been “fragmentary” and “out of context.”
Harbach seemed agitated in the course of the back again and forth, and at one stage the decide interjected, “I’m heading to inquire that you quiet down.”
Woodward managed that his account of the meeting was exact. “Those matters took place,” he claimed of his allegations. “What I recognized at the time was Mr. Nauta’s refusal to cooperate could be made use of against him.”
He advised the judge he is well prepared to just take the witness stand and testify below oath about the meeting. Bratt was also in court docket for the listening to but did not address the decide through the early morning listening to.
Cannon held another listening to in the afternoon on a different movement by Nauta trying to get to dismiss the rates from all 3 defendants in the situation — Trump, his valet Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, a house supervisor at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate — mainly because of alleged procedural failures in the indictment. She did not rule on either movement.
The case had been scheduled to go to demo on Monday, but Cannon, a Trump nominee, pushed the trial day back again indefinitely previously this thirty day period citing a “myriad” of legal issues she even now has to form via, which include the motions to dismiss.
Trump faces dozens of felony counts in the scenario, which include willful retention of countrywide protection facts, false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or document and corruptly concealing a document. Nauta and de Oliveira are charged with aiding Trump conceal the files, producing untrue statements to federal investigators about their involvement, and plotting to delete Mar-a-Lago protection footage that experienced been subpoenaed by the Justice Office. All 3 have pleaded not guilty.
