Prosecutor blasts Trump co-defendant's 'garbage argument' at heated hearing in classified documents case
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A federal prosecutor on Wednesday angrily pushed back on allegations of vindictive prosecution and prosecutorial misconduct from one of former President Donald Trump's co-defendants in the classified documents case, calling some of the claims "garbage" and "a fantasy."
“That was difficult to sit through,” prosecutor David Harbach said of lawyer Stanley Woodward’s arguments to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that his client, Walt Nauta, had been indicted as retaliation for not cooperating with the government.
"It's a garbage argument, to begin with," Harbach said, before pushing back on Woodward's claims that another prosecutor in special counsel Jack Smith's office had inappropriately sought to pressure Woodward by bringing up his application for a judgeship in Washington, D.C., during a meeting.
“Mr. Woodward’s story about what happened" at the August 2022 meeting between Woodward and prosecutor Jay Bratt "is a fantasy,” Harbach said. “It did not happen,” he said, adding that even if it did, it still would not meet the standard of a vindictive prosecution.
Under questioning from Cannon, Harbach, who was not in the meeting, said Woodward’s alleged quotes from the meeting were “fragmentary” and “out of context.”
Harbach seemed agitated throughout the back and forth, and at one point the judge interjected, “I’m going to ask that you calm down.”
Woodward maintained that his account of the meeting was accurate. “Those things happened,” he said of his allegations. “What I understood at the time was Mr. Nauta’s refusal to cooperate could be used against him.”
He told the judge he is prepared to take the witness stand and testify under oath about the meeting. Bratt was also in court for the hearing but did not address the judge during the morning hearing.
Cannon held another hearing in the afternoon on a separate motion by Nauta seeking to dismiss the charges against all three defendants in the case — Trump, his valet Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate — because of alleged procedural failures in the indictment. She did not rule on either motion.
The case had been scheduled to go to trial on Monday, but Cannon, a Trump nominee, pushed the trial date back indefinitely earlier this month citing a “myriad” of legal issues she still has to sort through, including the motions to dismiss.
Trump faces dozens of felony counts in the case, including willful retention of national defense information, false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record and corruptly concealing a document. Nauta and de Oliveira are charged with helping Trump hide the documents, making false statements to federal investigators about their involvement, and plotting to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage that had been subpoenaed by the Justice Department. All three have pleaded not guilty.
