The federal judge overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday rejected a bid by one of his co-defendants to dismiss the charges against him, saying he was the victim of a vindictive government prosecution.
Co-defendant Walt Nauta, who serves as Trump’s personal adviser, accused prosecutors from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office of wrongly charging him because he refused to cooperate with their efforts to build a case against the former president by testifying against him before a grand jury.
Mr. Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., also alleged that during a meeting at the Justice Department two years ago, prosecutors threatened to thwart a judgeship he was seeking if he did not persuade his client to run against Mr. Trump.
But in an order issued Saturday night, Judge Aileen M. Cannon rejected those arguments, ruling that although Mr. Nauta had refused to testify against Mr. Trump, there was “no evidence to suggest that charges were brought to punish him for doing so.”
And while Judge Cannon declined to go into the details of Mr. Woodward’s allegations that prosecutors pressured him to obtain Mr. Nauta’s cooperation, she denied his motion for vengeance because, she noted, he had alleged that the government was biased against him, not his client, as the law requires.
The complaint in the documents case, filed last June in federal court in Fort Pierce, Florida, accuses Mr. Nauta of conspiring with Mr. Trump to hide from the government several boxes of confidential documents that the former president had taken from the White House when he left office and brought to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.
Prosecutors say Mr. Nauta, who also worked for Mr. Trump while he was in office, participated in a related plot to destroy security camera footage of Mr. Nauta and another Mar-a-Lago employee, Carlos De Oliveira, as they moved the boxes. Both men also face charges of lying to investigators working on the case.
Mr. Woodward’s allegation that one of Mr. Smith’s top deputies, Jay I. Bratt, tried to coerce Mr. Nauta into cooperating during a Justice Department meeting was a deeply personal bone of contention in the case — and one that prosecutors have vehemently rejected.
At a hearing in Fort Pierce in May, Bratt’s colleague, David Harbach, told Judge Cannon that the story was completely fabricated.
“The story of what happened at that meeting is a fantasy,” Mr. Harbach said. “It didn’t happen.”
In her order, Judge Cannon appeared to strike a middle ground, noting that she “did not infer any misconduct on the part of the prosecutors or doubt Mr. Woodward’s statements that he had honestly conveyed his recollection.”
She also pointed out that the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, was investigating Mr. Woodward’s allegations but was suspending any investigation “pending the resolution of this matter.”
Mr. Trump has filed his own vindictive prosecution motion against Mr. Smith and his team, accusing them of bringing the charges in the case in a partisan effort to derail his presidential campaign. The motion also accused the government of unfairly targeting Mr. Trump while other public figures in possession of classified documents — including President Biden — have never been charged.
Judge Cannon has not yet ruled on Mr. Trump’s motion, but noted in her order Saturday that her decision to deny Mr. Nauta’s motion “should not be construed as a commentary on the merits” of the former president’s claims.
The judge has been slowly working his way through a flurry of motions to dismiss the charges in the case, which were brought by lawyers for both Mr. Trump and his two co-defendants.
Earlier this week, Trump’s lawyers asked her for permission to file additional legal briefs on one of those motions, arguing that Trump enjoys immunity from prosecution in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court ruling that granted him broad protection from criminal charges arising from acts he performed in his official capacity as president.
