Prosecutors in Donald Trump's classified documents case in Florida are hoping to redact and use files that have been sealed in Washington, D.C.
Chief prosecutor Jack Smith has already applied in Washington, D.C. to have the documents unsealed, and now wants his request transferred to Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida in the hope that she will unseal them.
Trump is facing 40 federal charges over his handling of sensitive materials retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House in January 2021. He is accused of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to return them. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
As the documents are sealed, their contents were not revealed in Smith's filing to Cannon on Thursday.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's attorney via email for comment on Friday.
In the filing on Thursday, Smith told Cannon, the judge overseeing the classified documents case, that Trump's motion to suppress the documents is opposed by prosecutors and "come[s] from a matter that is sealed in the District of Columbia."
Smith wrote that, in a hearing in the Florida case on March 1, "the Government indicated that it would be seeking relief as to the sealing restrictions from the court in the District of Columbia."
As per federal rules, Smith's office must request the court in the District of Columbia to transfer the petition to unseal the documents to Cannon's court.
If the judge agrees to this, then Smith will request that they be redacted to protect witnesses. This is similar to his request to redact search warrants that reveal the names of FBI agents who raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in search of classified documents the former president had stored there.
"The Government is preparing such a [request to unseal] and will serve it on the appropriate parties. Once the Court has the matter, the Government will be seeking to have three pleadings in these exhibit sets redacted (likely consistently with the search warrant packages) and the remainder of the docket entries sealed to protect witness testimony and the privacy of ancillary parties," Smith wrote.
Earlier, in a filing on March 5, Smith's office told Cannon that it wanted to "email unredacted versions of the briefs and attachments, as well as red-box versions of the briefs and attachments showing proposed redactions, to the Court and defense counsel on March 7."
In political circles, "red box" refers to coded language used by U.S. political parties on their websites to circumvent campaign finance laws. By speaking in recognized codes, Democrats and Republicans can instruct Political Action Committees to spend money on political campaigns without the PACs illegally contributing to the political parties directly.
Smith wants to use similar coded language in publicly available court filings so that nobody can identify the FBI agents and witnesses who may be testifying against Trump.
In a court filing in February, Smith alluded to threats made in other Trump cases. This is believed to refer to the other federal case Smith is prosecuting against Trump, in which the former president is accused of trying to illegally interfere in the result of the 2020 election, and the civil fraud trial against Trump in New York.
Update 03/08/24 10:12 a.m. ET: This article was updated with added detail on Smith's request to redact documents in the Florida case.
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Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more
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