Federal judge Aileen Cannon in Florida asked federal prosecutors to explain the use of grand juries in both Florida and Washington, D.C., in the classified documents case against Donald Trump even though charges were filed in South Florida. Prosecutors must respond by Aug. 22. Trump and two aides — Waltine “Walt” Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira — were charged in a 42-count indictment that accuses the former president of improperly retaining 32 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence and club, and seeking to thwart government attempts to retrieve them. the Washington Post reports. Prosecutors first charged Trump and Nauta in June and added charges in July. De Oliveira was first charged in a superseding indictment. For many months, Justice Department prosecutors had questioned witnesses in the Florida case before a federal grand jury in Washington. The secret proceedings yielded much of the evidence at the crux of the case.
In May, the grand jury activity appeared to continue at a federal courthouse in Miami. Ultimately, prosecutors filed charges in a West Palm Beach courthouse — a courthouse in the same district as Miami and the area where Mar-a-Lago is located. Prosecutors said in a court filing last week that they continued to use the grand jury in Washington after they initially charged Trump in June to investigate alleged instances of obstructing the investigation. The focus of the July superseding indictment was on obstruction, alleging that all defendants tried to delete security footage that the government wanted as evidence in the case.