The Justice Department moved on Wednesday to dismiss the Palm Beach, Florida, classified documents case against two employees of President Donald Trump, following the agency’s firing of more than a dozen federal prosecutors on the former special counsel’s team that had filed the original indictment.

The department’s motion to drop the case was signed by Hayden O’Byrne, who was appointed as the “interim” U.S. Attorney in Miami on Monday at the same time as the firings. O’Byrne, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, was hired as a prosecutor by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2019.

The one-page motion did not explain why the Justice Department was asking the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to dismiss the case against the remaining defendants, Trump’s valet at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Waltine Nauta, and the Palm Beach property’s maintenance manager, Carlos De Oliveira.

“The United States of America moves to voluntarily dismiss its appeal with prejudice,” O’Byrne’s motion says. “The government has conferred with counsel for Appellees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who do not object to the voluntary dismissal.”

If the appeals court approves the Miami prosecutor’s request, the classified documents case will officially end. It also seems unlikely that the Justice Department will ever release former special counsel Jack Smith’s final report to Congress — a move that was blocked last week by a federal judge presiding over the case.

Federal prosecutors on Smith’s team had filed the appeal in late July before Trump took office this month, seeking to reinstate criminal charges against the two assistants who were initially charged with him.

The case ended up before the appeals court after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee based in the Fort Pierce federal courthouse, dismissed the entire 42-count indictment, ruling in mid-July that Smith had been unlawfully appointed to his position as special counsel. Smith’s team appealed Cannon’s ruling, which many experts said defied legal precedent. When Trump won the presidential election in November, federal prosecutors were forced to drop the appeal as it related to him, but not his two assistants.

Cannon issued her decision soon after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion, ruled that Trump was generally immune from criminal liability for his official acts — including his attempts to use the Justice Department to obstruct the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden. Trump was separately charged in connection with his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but that indictment was also dismissed by Smith after Trump’s victory in the November election.

The classified documents case was filed in June 2023. An indictment, returned by a Miami grand jury, accused Trump of violating the Espionage Act by withholding highly sensitive military, defense and security documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence from the U.S. government — after he had left the White House following the end of his first term. The indictment also accused Trump of conspiring with his two assistants to obstruct official efforts to retrieve them.

But in the documents case, Trump’s lawyers argued that in November 2022, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith unlawfully “without Senate confirmation.” In a court filing, they said Smith was appointed as “a private citizen and like-minded political ally to wield the prosecutorial power of the United States. As such, Jack Smith lacks the authority to prosecute this action.”

In the indictment, Smith’s team alleged that Trump brought a few underlings at his Palm Beach estate into a close circle that prosecutors say assisted him in trying to hide boxes of classified documents from authorities and to delete video security footage of Mar-a-Lago’s storage area and nearby hallway linked to the residence.

According to the indictment, Trump spoke with De Oliveira for 24 minutes after the Justice Department informed his legal team on June 22, 2022, of a draft grand jury subpoena for the surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago. Two days later, the subpoena was officially delivered to Trump’s residence. And on June 25, after changing his travel plans, Nauta flew to the Palm Beach estate. Then, on June 27, Nauta collaborated with De Oliveira to find and destroy the surveillance video, the indictment states.

The indictment does not say whether Trump, Nauta or De Oliveira were successful in deleting any of the video footage. But previous filings in the unprecedented case show that a June 2022 grand jury subpoena uncovered video images that prosecutors with the special counsel’s office say revealed damning evidence.

The information provided the basis for FBI agents to obtain a court-approved warrant to search Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, when they found and seized more than 100 classified documents in the former president’s office and the club’s storage area.

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