A US court dismissed the criminal case against Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified material. This is a remarkable development as he looks to reclaim the White House, nearly two years after FBI investigators investigated his Florida home for lost national secrets.
Judge Rules Appointment of Special Counsel Illegal
In a 93-page ruling on Monday, US District Judge Aileen Cannon determined that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith was illegal. It culminates a run of recent victories for Trump in the several criminal charges that are still pending against him, beginning with the historic ruling by the US Supreme Court last month that found presidents are at least somewhat shielded from prosecution for official activities.
It is quite likely that the Justice Department will file an appeal of Cannon’s ruling. An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by a representative for Smith’s office.
Anticipated Appeal by the Justice Department
The firing occurs just before Trump is set to accept the Republican National Convention nomination in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, following an attempted murder attempt that left the former president wounded over the weekend. Investigating is done by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Trump Calls for Dismissal of All Legal Actions
Trump called for the closure of all criminal and civil lawsuits against him in other courts in a post on his Truth Social platform, saying that the dismissal of the Florida case “should be just the first step.” He restated his assertions that every legal action he has encountered since leaving the White House was a result of “political attacks” meant to prevent him from winning the presidency again.
Requests for responses from the Trump and Biden campaigns’ spokespeople were not immediately answered. The Justice Department was contacted by the White House after it declined to respond.
Garland was not given explicit power by Congress to choose or finance the special counsel, according to Cannon, a Trump appointee to the federal court in south Florida in 2020.
“The role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers and the role of Congress in authorizing expenditures by law are two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme that the Court is convinced are violated by Special Counsel Smith’s prosecution of this action,” Cannon said.
Regarding how she handled Trump’s case, Cannon has come under fire—both for the reasoning behind her decisions and for delaying the trial date indefinitely. Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade suggested that Smith’s office would use the government’s appeal of Monday’s ruling to press for Cannon to be dropped from the case. According to McQuade, “this order might be a blessing in disguise.”
Supreme Court’s Role
In May, Trump was found guilty in the hush money case, and last week, he was scheduled to be in New York for his sentence. With the help of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that granted him and all presidents at least partial immunity, Trump’s defense team was able to successfully request a postponement of the sentencing process while they made their case to have the conviction overturned.
Justice Clarence Thomas expressed doubts over the validity of Smith’s appointment in a separate opinion he authored as part of the Supreme Court’s immunity judgment, which Cannon’s decision cited.
Justice Clarence Thomas expressed doubts over the validity of Smith’s appointment in a separate opinion he authored as part of the Supreme Court’s immunity judgment, which Cannon’s decision cited.
Historical Context
It seems that throughout the nation’s history, there has been a “tradition” of designating someone akin to a special attorney during times of political controversy, according to Cannon. However, very few, if any, of these individuals truly fit Special Counsel Smith’s role. With very little control or monitoring, Mr. Smith is a private man acting with all the authority of a United States Attorney.
The federal rules governing the appointment of special counsels were also criticized by Cannon, who said that they “impose virtually no mechanism for supervision or control by the Attorney General” yet “giving an exceedingly broad charge.”
Legal proceedings
After leaving office on January 20, 2021, Trump was accused of illegally retaining hundreds of sensitive papers and of plotting with advisers to thwart the government’s attempts to retrieve such records. When authorities searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in August 2022, they found over a hundred documents marked with sensitive information. Last summer, a federal grand jury produced an indictment.
Trump’s attorneys had requested to put the majority of the papers case on hold after the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling earlier this month so that both parties could debate the importance of the court’s ruling. Trump’s attorneys contended that since he made judgments as president over which papers to mark as personal and take with him, such decisions should be exempt from charges relating to the possession of secret documents.
The Justice Department retorted that the issue of whether Trump unlawfully retained state secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort for years was unrelated to the Presidential Records Act, a federal statute that governs the processing of a president’s “personal” and “presidential” records.
Ongoing Legal Challenges
Smith is pursuing a further criminal lawsuit against Trump in a federal court located in Washington, D.C., alleging that he engaged in illegal collusion to tamper with the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The judge presiding over that lawsuit is not bound by Cannon’s ruling, which has been placed on hold while the parties argue over Trump’s immunity from prosecution. Following the formal return of the case to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan by the Supreme Court, those proceedings are anticipated to continue in the coming weeks.
A dispute over whether District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified due to her relationship with a member of the prosecution team has put a state case against Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, on hold.
The majority of Trump’s small-dollar fundraising boost—which allowed him to surpass Biden in the money race—came from his legal troubles.
