A federal judge on Monday slightly narrowed the scope of the classified documents case against former President Donald J. Trump, saying prosecutors cannot indict him on the basis that he allegedly showed highly classified military maps to a political adviser months after he left office.
Judge Eileen M. Cannon’s decision was less of a major blow to the charges against Trump than a scathing rebuke to the prosecutors working for Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the case. While Judge Cannon technically removed the allegations from the 53-page indictment, prosecutors could still present evidence from the allegations to a jury if the case ultimately goes to trial.
The incident Judge Cannon prosecuted took place at a meeting at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, in August or September 2021. During the meeting, prosecutors said, Trump showed classified maps related to ongoing military operations to a representative of his political action committee, widely believed to be Suzie Wiles, who now serves as a top adviser to Trump’s campaign.
Prosecutors said Trump told Wiles that the military operations were not going well, while showing him the map. The indictment noted that Wiles did not have a security clearance at the time or a “need to know” about classified information about the military operations.
The maps episode illustrates Trump’s mishandling of classified material, but it is not at the heart of the formal allegations in the case, which center on his removal of about 30 documents containing national security secrets from the White House and his repeated attempts to block the government from retrieving them from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.
While Judge Cannon removed the map incident from the indictment, he did not mention a similar incident that allegedly occurred a few months earlier at Trump’s Bedminster estate, where prosecutors said Trump showed classified operational plans to a group of people interviewing former chief of staff Mark Meadows for a memoir he was writing.
According to a recording from that day, Trump said of the plan, “As president, I could declassify it. But I can’t now. But it’s still a secret.”
Because prosecutors ultimately charged Trump with illegally possessing classified plans, Judge Cannon likely allowed that charge to remain as part of the indictment.
But Trump’s lawyers objected to the map being included as part of a broader attack on the indictment, arguing it was irrelevant and irrelevant. Because Trump has not been formally accused of illegally transmitting classified material to others, only of illegally retaining it after leaving the White House, the lawyers argued, the map should not have been included as part of the indictment.
In his ruling, Judge Cannon rejected the lawyers’ request to dismiss the charges in their entirety, but he noted that prosecutors had assumed additional responsibility by choosing to charge Trump with what is called an “oral indictment,” which describes events in evocative terms rather than simply listing legal violations.
She said she agreed with Trump’s lawyers, who argued that much of the indictment’s language, including the map episode, was “legally unnecessary” and that “risks could arise from prosecutors’ decisions to include lengthy descriptions of their version of the facts in the indictment.”
Judge Cannon added that it was “inappropriate” to include the map story in the indictment, given that one of Smith’s top aides acknowledged at a hearing last month that the map story was not directly related to the charges facing Trump.
At a hearing in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida, Deputy U.S. Attorney Jay I. Blatt told Judge Cannon that prosecutors had not treated the case as a case of alleged conduct but rather as evidence of the former president’s reckless handling of classified materials.
Blatt said the evidence was admissible under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 404(b), which allows prosecutors to tell jurors about “bad acts” committed by a defendant that are not directly charged in the case.
Judge Cannon expressed skepticism of Blatt’s claims throughout the hearing.
“Do indictments typically include a 404(b) section?” she asked.
When Blatt said he had included similar evidence in other indictments, Judge Cannon countered, “Is that appropriate?”
Cannon left open the possibility that prosecutors could eventually present the map story to jurors at trial, but they would first have to get permission from Cannon to do so, and Trump’s defense team could challenge the request.
“The president has repeatedly denied the allegations, and has repeatedly denied the allegations, including the allegations against him,” the judge said.
