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(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s two co-defendants in the classified documents case, his employees Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, are not expected to receive presidential pardons as discussions continue about possibly ending the prosecution, according to multiple people familiar with the case and the Trump administration’s approach to it.
One option would be to drop the Justice Department’s appeal aimed at reviving the criminal case against them as soon as Tuesday, the sources said. That would end the prosecution without pardoning them, which the sources said is not on the table because that could signify there is wrongdoing to forgive.
The historic classified documents case was tossed out by Judge Aileen Cannon last summer, with the Trump appointee ruling that Jack Smith’s appointment by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland violated the Constitution. But the Biden Justice Department appealed the dismissal and defended the special counsel’s prosecutorial authority.
Smith dropped his prosecution of Trump altogether after he was reelected in November. At the time, Smith said prosecutors were keeping their case on mishandling classified documents alive against Nauta and De Oliveira, both of whom were accused of helping Trump obstruct the federal investigation into alleged document mishandling.
Nauta and De Oliveira had both pleaded not guilty to the obstruction charges.
Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira were charged in 2023 by Smith as part of his probe into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified information following his first term in the White House.
Nauta was accused by Smith of assisting Trump in his alleged efforts to hide boxes of classified documents from a Trump attorney who was collecting them for a grand jury subpoena and of making false statements to investigators probing the documents’ whereabouts.
De Oliveira was accused of working alongside Trump and Nauta to obstruct the investigation by attempting to delete security footage from the Mar-a-Lago estate sought through a grand jury subpoena.
CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.
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