US court drops documents case against Trump associates, final step in legal saga

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. court on Tuesday granted prosecutors' request to drop the criminal case against two associates of President Donald Trump who were accused of obstructing a probe into his mishandling of classified documents, marking the end of the federal cases brought against Trump while he was out of office.

The U.S. Court of the Appeals for the 11th Circuit approved dropping the case against Trump valet Walt Nauta and property manager Carlos De Oliveira, who were charged alongside Trump in a case accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home and social club. All three pleaded not guilty.

A lawyer for Nauta, Richard Klugh, said the decision "closes out a prosecution that was misguided and which should never have been filed."

The charges were brought by former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who also accused Trump in a separate case of conspiring to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.

Smith dropped both cases after Trump won the November election, citing a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

At the time, prosecutors said they would continue the case against Nauta and De Oliveira, who faced obstruction charges.

But after Trump took office, the acting U.S. attorney in south Florida, who had taken over the case from Smith, asked the appeals court to drop it.

Prosecutors asked the appeals court to intervene last year after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, dismissed the charges against Trump and his two co-defendants, ruling that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel.

The court had not weighed in on that issue at the time prosecutors asked to drop the case.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward, editing by Deepa Babington)