Donald Trump’s two co-defendants in his classified documents case requested Friday the charges against them be dropped, insisting they had no idea about the contents of the boxes they helped to move.
Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and Walt Nauta, the former president’s aide, are accused of helping Trump move boxes of classified documents so that federal investigators could not find them. They have also been accused of trying to delete security footage that showed them moving boxes.
The men’s attorneys claimed that their clients couldn’t be guilty of their obstruction-related charges because they didn’t know what Trump was really up to. De Oliveira’s lawyers even said he wasn’t aware of a grand jury subpoena for the security camera footage, and thus isn’t guilty of obstruction of justice.
“It’s not possible to obstruct an investigation you know nothing about,” attorney John Irving said in court.
Nauta’s lawyers also said he didn’t know he was doing anything illegal when he moved boxes “whose contents he was not aware of.”
But prosecutors argued otherwise, telling the court that they had evidence that De Oliveira knew the boxes were part of a legal action.
Cannon did not rule at the end of the hearing, but suggested that the positions sounded more like arguments to a jury—not a judge. A Trump appointee, she has been accused of delaying the case in Trump’s favor and possibly slow-walking a dismissal.
Meanwhile, Trump’s lead attorney on the classified documents case stepped down recently. Evan Corcoran had been one of the few lawyers to have been with the president from the start, and thanks to being misled by Trump and his aides about the documents, could even be called as a witness in the case.
