A U.S. federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal case against former President Donald Trump accusing him of illegally hoarding hundreds of national security documents at his Florida oceanside retreat as he left office in 2021.
It was a stunning legal victory for Trump as Republicans are set this week to officially nominate him as their 2024 presidential candidate just days after he survived an assassination attempt.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the documents case, often considered to be the strongest of an unprecedented four criminal indictments filed against Trump in the last 16 months, on grounds that Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed, and that Congress had not specifically voted to fund his investigation.
“Is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution?” Cannon rhetorically asked in her 93-page opinion. “After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no.”
Cannon said that despite the special prosecutor’s claims to the contrary, no U.S. law gave Attorney General Merrick Garland the broad legal authority to appoint “a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith.”
The ruling favoring Trump came as a surprise in that other judges have dismissed the same argument Trump’s lawyers advanced in the classified documents case about the legality of the appointment of Smith. Special prosecutors for 30 years have been named without congressional approval in high-profile, controversial U.S. cases, especially involving white-collar accusations of wrongdoing against prominent political figures.
The Justice Department is highly likely to appeal Cannon’s ruling, a case that could eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a separate ruling last month in which the Supreme Court granted Trump and future U.S. presidents immunity from prosecution related to their official actions, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested in a concurring opinion that the legality of the Smith appointment and the funding of his office could be ripe for judicial consideration.
In a lengthy comment on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said “this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step” in dropping other criminal cases he is facing or overturning multimillion-dollar civil verdicts against him.
Trump was convicted in New York in May of 34 felony charges accusing him of illegally trying to influence the outcome of his successful 2016 presidential campaign by falsifying business records at his real estate conglomerate to hide a $130,000 hush money payment before the election to porn star Stormy Daniels to silence her claim — denied by Trump — of a one-night tryst with him in 2006.
Trump is seeking to overturn the verdict by claiming that the recent Supreme Court ruling granting immunity from prosecution for official acts applies to the hush money case although almost the entirety of the testimony against him related to actions he took before becoming president in early 2017.
If New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan rejects Trump’s bid to upend the jury verdict, the former president’s sentencing is set for September 18, where he could be placed on probation or sentenced to up to four years in prison.
Trump also faces two other indictments, the first U.S. president ever to face criminal charges, with both related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 reelection loss to President Joe Biden. Smith filed one of the cases in federal court in Washington, while the other was brought by a prosecutor in the southern state of Georgia, where Biden narrowly defeated Trump in 2020.
With Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors engaged in lengthy legal disputes over the two election cases and the classified documents case now dismissed, the New York hush money verdict, assuming it, too, is not overturned, is likely to be the only Trump criminal case to reach a conclusion before the November 5 election.
In his comment after Cannon’s ruling, Trump called for “the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts” he is facing “as we move forward in Uniting our Nation.”
He claimed, falsely, that “the Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME.”
The only two cases brought by the Justice Department were the two brought by Smith, and Biden has denied directing either of the federal prosecutions of Trump.
Garland declined to comment on Monday’s ruling and a spokesperson for Smith did not immediately comment.
In her ruling, Cannon said Congress plays a key role in the appointment of high-level officials like Smith. She said his appointment by Garland “effectively usurps that important legislative authority,” transferring it to Garland as head of the Justice Department, “and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers” between two of the branches of the U.S. government, the legislative and executive branches.
Cannon ruled that if Congress and the White House wanted to give Garland the power to appoint Smith “to investigate and prosecute this action with the full powers” of a U.S. attorney who normally prosecutes federal criminal cases in the United States, it could have submitted his name to the U.S. Senate for approval, as is the case for the 93 U.S. attorneys in the Department of Justice stationed across the country.
The 40-count classified documents indictment was often viewed by legal analysts as the most perilous for Trump. Although required to turn over national security documents to the National Archives as he left the White House in January 2017, Trump instead took them to Mar-a-Lago, in southern Florida, claiming the documents were his personal property.
Trump had pleaded not guilty in the case, denying any wrongdoing
With Cannon’s dismissal of the indictment, it brings an abrupt end to the case unless Smith gets it reinstated on appeal. It was the latest example of Cannon ruling in the case in a way that benefited the former president.
During the FBI’s investigation of the documents kept by Trump, Cannon appointed an independent arbiter to inspect the classified documents recovered during the search of Mar-a-Lago, but her decision was overturned months later by a unanimous federal appeals panel.
