House Judiciary Democrats penned a letter Wednesday asking outgoing U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to drop the charges against President-elect Donald Trump’s former co-defendants in the classified documents case. 

They want Trump’s valet Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, to walk from the charges so that Garland can release the second volume, which is related to the classified documents case, of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report. Smith resigned from the Justice Department on Friday. Garland said he will not release the second volume because both men still face prosecution. 

The Democrats believe that Trump will pardon both men, so Garland should drop the charges now or the report will not come out. 

“While we understand your honorable and steadfast adherence to Mr. Nauta’s and Mr. De Oliveira’s due process rights as criminal defendants, the practical effect of this position is that Volume 2 will almost certainly remain concealed for at least four more years if you do not release it before President-elect Trump’s inauguration on January 20,” the letter obtained by Fox News says. 

FORMER TRUMP CO-DEFENDANTS WANT JUDGE TO BLOCK SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH REPORT

“The public interest, however, now demands that the President-elect must not escape accountability to the American people,” they added. “Accordingly, to the extent the tangential charges against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira stand in the way of the overriding imperative of transparency and truth, the interests of justice demand that their cases be dismissed now so that the entirety of Special Counsel Smith’s report can be released to the American people.”

The letter was signed by House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin of Maryland, as well as Democratic committee members Reps. Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman of New York; Eric Swalwell, Ted Lieu, J. Luis Correa, Sydney Kamlager-Dove and Zoe Lofgren of California; Hank Johnson and Lucy McBath of Georgia; Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Pramila Jayapal of Washington; Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania; Joseph Neguse of Colorado; Deborah Ross of North Carolina; Becca Balint of Vermont; Jesus G. “Chuy” Garcia of Illinois; and Jasmine Crockett of Missouri. 

Walt Nauta, a personal aide to Trump, arrives at the Alto Lee Adams Sr. US Courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, on Aug. 10, 2023.  (CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)

“We obviously do not condone the sycophantic, delinquent, and criminal behavior that Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira are charged with,” the letter says. “However, Donald Trump was plainly the mastermind of this deception operation to conceal and abuse classified material, a fact made clear by his being charged with 32 counts of willfully retaining these classified documents, while his co-defendants were charged with lesser offenses related to obstructing the investigation, largely at Mr. Trump’s direction. By virtue of DOJ policy prohibiting the indictment or prosecution of a sitting president, Mr. Trump has dodged any criminal accountability for his own wrongdoing. Mr. Trump’s 2024 victory saved him from a public trial and robbed the American people of the opportunity to learn the meaning and details of his unpatriotic, reckless, and intentional abuse of national security information.” 

DOJ RELEASES FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH’S REPORT ON INVESTIGATION INTO TRUMP ELECTION INTERFERENCE CASE

Judge Aileen Cannon will hear arguments over Volume 2 in Fort Pierce, Florida, on Thursday. Garland released Volume 1, focused on the election interference case, earlier this week. 

Attorneys for Nauta and De Oliveira earlier this month asked Cannon to keep the special counsel report out of the public eye. 

Carlos De Oliveira, property manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, arrives at the Alto Lee Adams Sr. U.S. Courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, on Aug. 10, 2023. (EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira all pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging they conspired to obstruct the FBI investigation into classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. 

Smith was tapped by Garland in 2022 to investigate both the alleged effort by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as Trump’s keeping of allegedly classified documents at his Florida residence. 

It is customary for a special counsel to release a final report when his or her work is done, detailing the findings of their investigation and explaining any prosecution or declination decisions they reached as a result of the probe. It’s up to Garland whether to release it publicly. In Smith’s case, the prosecution decision is immaterial, given Trump’s status as president-elect and longstanding Justice Department policy against bringing criminal charges against a sitting president. 

Garland is expected to give his farewell address to the Justice Department on Thursday afternoon.

On the first day of the California Legislature’s new session, Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, an Orange County Republican, introduced a bill that would ban transgender high school students from competing on girls’ sports teams.

“Young women who have spent years training, sacrificing and earning their place to compete at the highest level are now being forced to compete against individuals with undeniable biological advantages,” Sanchez, of Rancho Santa Margarita, said in a video posted to social media.

“It’s not just unfair,” she added. “It’s disheartening and dangerous.”

Sanchez’s proposed law, called the Protect Girls’ Sports Act, is almost certain to fail in a Legislature controlled by a Democratic supermajority with a record of embracing inclusion for LGBTQ+ Californians.

But her introduction of it — notably, as her first bill of the session — underscores the persistent Republican emphasis on transgender issues, which continue to shape policy debates in California, where Democratic leaders have cast the state as a bulwark against President-elect Donald Trump, whose opposition to trans rights was central to his campaign.

Sacramento Democrats have blasted Sanchez’s bill as a political stunt, saying it is an unnecessary attack against transgender youth, who make up a tiny portion of California’s school-age population.

Assemblymember Chris Ward, chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, said in a statement that the caucus, whose members are all Democrats, “will not stand by as anyone attempts to use kids as political pawns.”

“Attacking kids is a failed 2024 issue,” said Ward (D-San Diego). “We are surprised the Assembly member introduced her first bill targeting a very small, vulnerable population of kids rather than using the opportunity to address key issues of affordability, housing and more that are impacting Californians.”

The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, which researches public policy around sexual orientation and gender identity, estimates that about 1.4% of American teenagers ages 13-17 — about 300,000 individuals nationwide — identify as transgender. Fewer play sports.

While polls show that most Americans support protecting LGBTQ+ people from discrimination, they are deeply divided on issues involving queer children, especially kids who identify as transgender or nonbinary.

In a nationwide poll conducted last year for The Times by NORC at the University of Chicago, about two-third of adult respondents said transgender girls and women should never or only rarely be allowed to participate on female sports teams.

“Regardless of where Sacramento Democrats are on this issue, they’ll need to face facts,” Sanchez said in a statement to The Times, noting public opinion on the issue.

On the other side of the political aisle, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) last week introduced the Transgender Privacy Act, which would automatically seal all court records related to a person’s gender transition in an effort to protect them from being outed or harassed.

“The incoming Trump Administration and Republican Congressional leadership have made clear that targeting and erasing trans people is among their highest policy priorities, and California must have our trans community members’ backs,” Wiener said in a statement about his Senate Bill 59.

Supporters of LGBTQ+ students at a Dec. 19 Riverside Unified School District board meeting where demonstrators called on the district to “save girls’ sports.”

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Sanchez’s Assembly Bill 89, would require the California Interscholastic Federation, which regulates high school sports for public and private schools, to enact rules prohibiting any “pupil whose sex was assigned male at birth from participating on a girls’ interscholastic sports team.” It does not stop transgender boys from playing on boys’ teams or specify how the CIF would verify students’ gender.

California education code explicitly says students must be allowed to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including team sports, and must be permitted to use restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed those rights into law in 2013.

Sanchez’s bill comes after several recent high-profile fights across California over trans girls and women playing high school and college sports.

In November, a Christian high school in Merced withdrew its girls’ volleyball team from a state playoff match against a San Francisco team with a transgender player.

This fall, the San José State women’s volleyball team was embroiled in controversy after current and former players and an associate coach tried to have a trans player removed from the roster by filing a federal lawsuit. A judge later ruled the player could compete.

In November, two female high school students sued the Riverside Unified School District, alleging a transgender girl unfairly ousted one of them from a spot on the varsity cross-country team. The federal lawsuit also claims that when the girls protested the situation — by wearing T-shirts that read, “Save Girls Sports,” and, “It’s common sense. XX [does not equal] XY” — school officials compared it to wearing a swastika in front of a Jewish student.

The suit claims that the district’s policies unfairly restrict the girls’ freedom of expression and deny them fair and equal access to athletic opportunities.

Republican Assemblymembers Bill Essayli, front left, and Leticia Castillo, front right, called on the Riverside Unified School District superintendent to resign over his handling of the issue of transgender athletes competing in girls’ high school sports at a board meeting last month.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Two Republican Assembly members from the Inland Empire, Bill Essayli and Leticia Castillo, called on the district’s superintendent to resign over her handling of the issue.

In 2023, Essayli, whose district borders Sanchez’s, co-sponsored a bill that would have required school employees to notify parents if their child identified as transgender at school. Critics argued the bill would out and potentially endanger trans kids, while violating student privacy protections under California law. The bill died in committee, but similar policies sprouted up on school boards in conservative parts of the state, showing how a Republican idea that gets squelched in the state Capitol can still drive debate on an issue.

In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 1955, which prohibits schools from mandating that teachers notify families about student gender identity changes.

Daisy Gardner, an outreach director for Our Schools USA, a nonprofit that supported AB 1955, called Sanchez’s bill and Republicans’ focus on transgender athletes “a very powerful organizing tool from the far right.”

The parent of an LGBTQ+ student who said she was speaking for herself, not on behalf of Our Schools USA, Gardner called Sanchez’s bill “a media stunt designed to whip up fear and hatred of trans people so that the far right can flip California red in 2026, and the casualties are trans lives.”

Gardner has been in contact with parents of two transgender high school athletes in the Riverside Unified School District amid the recent controversy and read a statement on behalf of one of the girl’s family during a raucous school board meeting last month.

“They are in pure hell,” she said of the parents. “They don’t know how to protect their kids.”

Matt Rexroad, a longtime California political consultant, said that while urban Democrats might be scratching their heads over Sanchez introducing this long shot bill on such a hot-button issue, it makes sense for her suburban district, which is “one of the more conservative areas of California.”

“It’s a good political issue for certain parts of California,” Rexroad said. “Clearly, Scott Wiener is not going to introduce this bill or vote for it, but not all of his bills pass either.”

Sanchez, he said, “is representing the views of her constituents.”

At least one of her constituents, though, was so angry about the Protect Girls’ Sports Act that she called Sanchez’s office and grilled a staffer about the specifics, like how a child’s gender would be verified.

Michele McNutt, a former Democrat who just changed her party registration to no-party-preference, said she was not satisfied with the staffer’s answers and called the bill “performative.”

“If it fails, they can frame it as, ‘California hates parents,’” said McNutt, whose two teenage daughters are student athletes in the Capistrano Unified School District. “I think the theater is the point, and it really isn’t about protecting girls’ sports.”