A US federal judge on Monday, July 15 dismissed the classified documents case against Donald Trump, clearing one of the major legal challenges facing the former US president.
In a 93-page ruling, District Judge Aileen Cannon said the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution.
“In the end, it seems the Executive’s growing comfort in appointing ‘regulatory’ special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny,” Cannon wrote.
The ruling by Cannon, a judge Trump appointed in 2020, comes on the first day of the Republican National Convention.
Many legal experts had viewed the classified documents case as the strongest one of the four cases that were pending against Trump.
Smith’s Special counsel had charged Trump last year with taking classified documents from the White House and resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials. He pleaded not guilty.
In a separate criminal case brought by Smith against Trump in Washington, DC, the special counsel was pursuing federal charges stemming from Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump also faces a state-level election subversion case in Georgia and he was convicted of state crimes in New York earlier this year for his role in a hush money payment scheme before the 2016 election.
Weeks ago, Cannon held a hearing on the issue several weeks ago, pushing attorneys to explain exactly how Smith’s investigation into Trump was being funded.
The judge’s questions were so pointed that special counsel attorney James Pearce argued that, even if Cannon were to throw out the case due to an appointments clause issue, the Justice Department was “prepared” to fund Smith’s cases through trial if necessary.
Cannon said in her ruling today that the special counsel’s position “effectively usurps” Congress’ “important legislative authority” by giving it to the head of a department DOJ, in this case – to appoint such an official.
“If the political branches wish to grant the Attorney General power to appoint Special Counsel Smith to investigate and prosecute this action with the full powers of a United States Attorney, there is a valid means by which to do so,” she wrote.
The Justice Department “could reallocate funds to finance the continued operation of Special Counsel Smith’s office,” but said it’s not yet clear whether a newly-brought case would pass legal muster.
“For more than 18 months, Special Counsel Smith’s investigation and prosecution has been financed by substantial funds drawn from the Treasury without statutory authorization, and to try to rewrite history at this point seems near impossible,” Cannon wrote.
“The Court has difficulty seeing how a remedy short of dismissal would cure this substantial separation-of-powers violation, but the answers are not entirely self-evident, and the caselaw is not well developed.”
She noted in her ruling that Smith’s team “suggested” at a court hearing on the matter that they could restructure the office’s funding to satisfy her concerns.
