FORT PIERCE, Fla. – A federal prosecutor on Wednesday angrily pushed back on allegations of vindictive prosecution and prosecutorial misconduct by one of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case, calling some of the claims “nonsense” and called ‘a fantasy’. .”
“That was hard to sit through,” prosecutor David Harbach said of defense attorney Stanley Woodward’s arguments before U.S. District Judge Aileen Kanon that his client, Walt Nauta, had been indicted in retaliation for not cooperating with the government.
“It’s a nonsense argument to begin with,” Harbach said, before questioning Woodward’s claims that another prosecutor in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office had improperly tried to pressure Woodward over his application for a judgeship in Washington DC during a lawsuit. meeting.
“Mr. Woodward’s account of what happened” during the August 2022 meeting between Woodward and accuser Jay Bratt “is a fantasy,” Harbach said. “It didn’t happen,” he said, adding that even if it did , it would still not meet the standard of a vindictive prosecution.
Under questioning by Cannon, Harbach, who was not at the meeting, said Woodward’s alleged quotes from the meeting were “fragmentary” and “out of context.”
Harbach seemed agitated throughout, and at one point the judge intervened: “I’m going to ask you to calm down.”
Woodward claimed that his account of the meeting was accurate. “Those things happened,” he said of his accusations. “What I understood at the time was that Mr Nauta’s refusal to cooperate could be used against him.”
He told the judge he is willing to take the witness stand and testify under oath about the meeting. Bratt was also in the courtroom 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 to dismiss 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. due to alleged procedural errors 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, postponed the trial date indefinitely earlier this month, citing a “numerous number” of legal issues she has yet to sort out, including the motions to rejection.
Trump faces dozens of crimes in the case, including willfully withholding 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 accused of helping Trump hide the documents, making false statements to federal investigators about their involvement and planning to delete security footage from Mar-a-Lago that was subpoenaed by the Department of Justice. All three have pleaded not guilty.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
