Judge Aileen Cannon denies another Trump motion to dismiss classified documents case

A federal judge on Monday denied an effort to dismiss former President Donald Trump's classified documents case, but agreed to delete a paragraph in the federal superseding indictment against the former president.

While rejecting defendants' efforts to dismiss the obstruction and false statement counts of theindictment, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon sided with them in finding that special counsel Jack Smith's office cannot include allegations about an incident in which Trump allegedly showed a “PAC Representative,” identified in many public reports as Susie Wiles, a classified map of a particular foreign country where an “ongoing military operation” was “not going well."

Trump and his co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos DeOliveira, had asked Cannon to strike a variety of what they characterized as prejudicial allegations. Cannon wrote that she agreed “that much of the language in the Superseding Indictment is legally unnecessary to serve the function of an indictment” as detailed in case law. She further noted “the risks that can flow from a prosecutor’s decision to include in a charging document an extensive narrative account of his or her view of the facts, especially in cases of significant public interest.”

But ultimately, Cannon agreed to strike only paragraph 36, which details the map incident.

Cannon struck that paragraph after finding its sole purpose in the indictment was to highlight a prior bad act of the former president, noting that evidence of a defendant’s prior crimes or wrongs are usually litigated after notice to the defendant of how the prosecution intends to use that evidence and related motion practice.

A campaign spokesperson and an attorney for Trump did not immediately respond to requests