The federal Trump classified documents case ended without a verdict. A Florida grand jury indicted Donald Trump in June 2023 on charges that he willfully retained national defense information at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office and then obstructed the government’s efforts to get it back. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the entire prosecution in July 2024, ruling that Special Counsel Jack Smith had been unlawfully appointed. After Trump won the November 2024 election, Smith dropped the appeal, and by February 2025 the charges against his two codefendants were gone as well. The only piece still moving in 2026 is the fight over whether Smith’s final report on the investigation will ever be made public.
What Trump Was Charged With
On June 8, 2023, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida indicted Trump on 37 counts tied to documents kept at his Palm Beach estate after his presidency ended. A superseding indictment in July 2023 added three counts, bringing the total to 40. The charges included willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding documents, corruptly concealing records, and making false statements.1NPR. Trump Indictment Classified Documents Charges2PBS NewsHour. Read Trumps New Charges in the Classified Documents Case
Two codefendants were charged with him. Walt Nauta, Trump’s personal valet, was accused of moving boxes of classified documents to keep a Trump attorney from finding them and of lying to the FBI. Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago, was accused of conspiring to delete surveillance footage under grand jury subpoena. Both men pleaded not guilty.3CNN. Classified Documents Case Dropped Against Trump Codefendants
What the Documents Contained
The 31 documents at the core of the retention counts held some of the most sensitive material the U.S. government produces. According to the indictment, they concerned U.S. nuclear programs, U.S. and foreign defense and weapons capabilities, vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.4BBC. Trump Indictment Classified Documents5NBC News. Trump Indictment Document Classified Key Takeaways
They originated with the CIA, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Department of Energy. Ten were classified at the Sensitive Compartmented Information level, and eight involved Special Access Programs. Prosecutors said the materials were stored in unsecured parts of Mar-a-Lago, including a ballroom, a bathroom, and a bedroom, at a property that hosted tens of thousands of members and guests.6PBS NewsHour. National Security Experts Weigh In5NBC News. Trump Indictment Document Classified Key Takeaways
The Obstruction Allegations
A large share of the case had nothing to do with the fact of retention and everything to do with what happened after the government asked for the documents back. The indictment alleged that Trump and Nauta moved boxes to keep them out of the reach of Trump’s own attorney, M. Evan Corcoran, who had been tasked with responding to a grand jury subpoena. Trump then allegedly caused Corcoran to submit a false certification to the FBI stating that a diligent search had been done and everything classified had been returned. Two months later, an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago recovered more than 100 additional classified documents.7ABC News. Timeline of Special Counsels Investigation
The superseding indictment added an allegation that De Oliveira took a Mar-a-Lago IT employee into a server room and told him “the boss” wanted the surveillance footage deleted. When the employee balked, De Oliveira pressed him: “What are we going to do?”2PBS NewsHour. Read Trumps New Charges in the Classified Documents Case
Why the Case Was Dismissed
On July 15, 2024, Judge Cannon threw out every count. Her ruling did not turn on the strength of the evidence or on any of Trump’s defenses about the Presidential Records Act or declassification. It turned on how Smith was hired. Cannon held that Attorney General Merrick Garland lacked statutory authority to appoint Smith, who was not a Department of Justice employee at the time and was working at The Hague. She concluded that no statute authorized the Special Counsel’s office, and she treated a unanimous Supreme Court statement in United States v. Nixon about the attorney general’s power to appoint special prosecutors as non-binding dicta.8Harvard Gazette. What the Judge Was Thinking
The ruling was at odds with how other courts had treated the same question. The D.C. Circuit had upheld the attorney general’s authority to appoint an independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation in 1987. A federal appeals court upheld the constitutionality of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment in 2019. Judge Tanya Chutkan, presiding over the separate January 6 case, said she did not find Cannon’s reasoning “particularly persuasive.”9Courthouse News Service. In Jan. 6 Case, Jack Smith Slams Trump Appointment Argument as Meritless
Cannon had been nominated by Trump in 2020 and confirmed 56-21. The Eleventh Circuit had reversed her twice earlier in the litigation, including a December 2022 decision faulting her for appointing a special master to review seized materials. The Eleventh Circuit’s Judicial Council dismissed misconduct complaints against her in May 2024, finding that recusal was not required based on her appointment by Trump and that a single case could not establish a pattern of delay.10ProPublica. Judge Aileen Cannon Trump Documents Case Ethics Complaint
Why the Case Was Never Revived
Smith appealed the dismissal to the Eleventh Circuit in August 2024. Then Trump won the November 2024 presidential election, and the appeal collapsed. Smith dropped the charges against Trump, citing longstanding Department of Justice policy against prosecuting a sitting president, and the Eleventh Circuit dismissed the appeal as to Trump on November 26, 2024.11NBC News. Appeals Court Agrees to Dismiss Trumps Classified Documents Case
The appeal continued briefly against Nauta and De Oliveira. On January 29, 2025, the new acting U.S. Attorney in Miami moved to dismiss it. On February 11, 2025, the Eleventh Circuit granted the motion in a one-line order, closing the case against every defendant.12ABC News. Court Dismisses Appeal13CBS News. Walt Nauta, Carlos De Oliveira Case Dismissed
The Fight Over Smith’s Final Report
Volume One of Smith’s report, covering the January 6 investigation, came out in early 2025. Volume Two, covering the documents investigation and reportedly laying out the evidence behind the 40 counts, has never been published.14House Judiciary Committee Democrats. House Judiciary Democrats Demand DOJ Release Report
Judge Cannon blocked its release. She imposed an injunction in January 2025, denied a motion by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University to intervene and lift it in December 2025, and on February 23, 2026, issued a permanent injunction. Cannon wrote that release would cause “irreparable damage” to Trump and “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice,” that the defendants “still enjoy the presumption of innocence held sacrosanct in our constitutional order,” and that Smith had been “acting without lawful authority.”15PBS NewsHour. Judge Permanently Blocks Release of Report16BBC. Judge Permanently Blocks Smiths Trump Documents Report
The Knight Institute appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, and that appeal is still pending in mid-2026. A separate suit by the transparency group American Oversight seeking release of Volume Two is also active.17Knight First Amendment Institute. United States v. Trump et al.18American Oversight. American Oversight v. DOJ
What Congressional Disclosures Have Added
In March 2026, House Judiciary Committee Democrats released material from investigative files the Department of Justice had produced to Congress. A January 13, 2023, DOJ memorandum prepared for then-Attorney General Garland stated that investigators had found classified materials “commingled with documents created after Trump left office” that were “pertinent to certain business interests,” which prosecutors treated as evidence of motive. At least one document was so sensitive that only six people in the U.S. government had access to it.19House Judiciary Committee Democrats. Damning New Documents Obtained by Judiciary Democrats
The same memorandum described a June 2022 flight from Palm Beach to New York on which Trump allegedly showed a classified map to passengers on his private plane. Susie Wiles, then CEO of Trump’s Super PAC and now his White House Chief of Staff, was identified as a witness. Fourteen people appeared on the flight manifest. The Guardian reported that the map incident was not charged as a separate count, likely because the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan complicated the legal definition of the material as national defense information.20PBS NewsHour. Trump Showed Off a Classified Map During a 2022 Plane Trip21The Guardian. Donald Trump Classified Map Private Plane Susie Wiles
The files also described a 23-year-old Trump aide, Chamberlain Harris, who scanned the contents of a box containing documents with classified markings onto her laptop and uploaded them to a cloud service. Harris kept sole custody of the box for much of 2022, moving it between locations before contractors found it during a third search in December 2022. A Trump lawyer later retrieved the scan and carried it on a thumb drive on a commercial flight.22House Judiciary Committee Democrats. Raskin Letter to AG Bondi
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding unredacted copies of the memorandum and the flight seating chart by April 14, 2026, along with answers on whether any foreign actors had accessed the materials. The Department of Justice called Raskin’s claims “baseless” and described his requests as a “cheap political stunt,” saying the document production was in “full compliance with the law and the court.” The White House called the allegations “deranged” and said “President Trump did nothing wrong.”23Al Jazeera. Democrat Alleges Trump Sold Out US Security24Courthouse News Service. DOJ May Have Disclosed Secret Grand Jury Material to Congress20PBS NewsHour. Trump Showed Off a Classified Map During a 2022 Plane Trip