The Mar-a-Lago indictment was slightly narrowed by Judge Aileen Cannon, who reportedly removed a paragraph that referenced former President Trump’s use of one of the classified documents discovered at his Florida residence.
However, she denied his attempts to dismiss the case.
The paragraph in question pertains to allegations that Trump displayed a classified map to a staff member of his PAC.
Trump acknowledged that “he should not be showing the map” and instructed the employee to refrain from approaching it.
After arguing that the reference was improper, Cannon concurred with Trump’s legal team that its inclusion in the indictment was “not appropriate,” as prosecutors did not present any charges related to that specific document.
The decision, however, demonstrates that Cannon is criticizing the team of special counsel Jack Smith, referring to a significant portion of the language in the indictment as “legally unnecessary.”
Prosecutors may still use the exchange as evidence during the trial.
Trump and his co-defendants had endeavored to dismiss nine distinct offenses from the case.
The indictment will now exclude the former president’s conversation with the PAC employee; however, she permitted a comparable incident in which Trump disclosed classified documents to book publishers to persist.
The decision from Cannon eliminates one of the numerous pretrial petitions from Trump that seek to dismiss the case from her desk.
The decision comes as Trump’s team filed yet another motion to dismiss the case on Tuesday, alleging that the FBI corrupted evidence in the case by failing to maintain the original order in which the documents were stored when they were recovered from Mar-a-Lago.
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