Aileen M. Cannon, United States District Judge, Southern District of Florida
Courtesy: US Courts
A Florida federal judge on Thursday said she would hold a hearing sealed from the general public to debate prosecutors’ request for an order to guard classified material at the guts of a criminal case against former President Donald Trump.
The hearing “will happen at a chosen time and place to debate sensitive, security-related issues concerning classified discovery,” Judge Aileen Cannon said in a written order.
Cannon didn’t say within the order where and when that hearing will occur.
But she said that Trump and his co-defendants within the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, didn’t need to attend the hearing.
Trump is charged in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida with crimes related to retaining classified government records after leaving the White House and attempting to cover up the undeniable fact that he was keeping those documents in boxes at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.
Nauta, who’s Trump’s valet, and De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago maintenance employee, are accused of participating within the cover-up effort. All of the defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Special counsel Jack Smith, whose office is prosecuting Trump, is asking Cannon to order that the previous president and his defense lawyers be allowed to debate classified information only inside special secured locations, referred to as sensitive compartmented information facilities, or SCIFs.
Smith opposes Trump’s suggestion that a SCIF be built at Mar-a-Lago or one other of his residences for that purpose.
In a court filing this week, Smith blasted that concept, saying Trump is searching for “special treatment that no other defendant would receive.”
“He’s asking to be the one defendant ever in a case involving classified information (at the very least to the Government’s knowledge) who would have the ability to debate classified information in a personal residence,” Smith wrote within the filing.