Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday dismissed Jack Smith’s classified documents case based on unlawful appointment and funding of the special counsel.
The charges waged against Trump and his co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira were all tossed.
Jack Smith indicted Trump on 37 federal counts in Miami in June 2023 for lawfully storing presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago estate which was protected by Secret Service agents.
Trump was charged with 31 counts under the Espionage Act of willful retention of national defense information and 6 other process crimes stemming from his conversations with his lawyer.
Last July Jack Smith hit Trump with 3 additional charges in the investigation into classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. The superseding indictment, filed in the Southern District of Florida, claims Trump was part of a scheme to delete security footage from Mar-a-Lago.
Judge Cannon dismissed the ENTIRE case: . “The clerk is directed to close this case,” Cannon wrote.
Cannon dismissed Jack Smith’s case based on both unconstitutional elements: The appointment by US Attorney Merrick Garland and the unlimited funding given to Jack Smith – both without the approval of Congress.
“Upon careful study of the foundational challenges raised in the Motion, the Court is convinced that Special Counsel’s Smith’s prosecution of this action breaches two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme—the role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers, and the role of Congress in authorizing expenditures by law,” Cannon wrote in her order.
“Both the Appointments and Appropriations challenges as framed in the Motion raise the following threshold question: is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution?” Judge Cannon wrote. “After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no.”
“The bottom line is this: The Appointments Clause is a critical constitutional restriction stemming from the separation of powers, and it gives to Congress a considered role in determining the propriety of vesting appointment power for inferior officers,” the judge wrote in a 93-page filing.
“The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers,” Cannon wrote.
Jack Smith is going to appeal Cannon’s decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“A spokesman for Smith said the Department of Justice later Monday had authorized the special counsel to appeal Cannon’s decision tossing the case to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.” CNBC reported.
“The dismissal of the case deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue that the Attorney General is statutorily authorized to appoint a Special Counsel,” said Smith’s spokesman Peter Carr.
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