Judge dismisses Donald Trump’s classified documents case

Judge Aileen Cannon says Jack Smith was illegally appointed and funded

A federal judge has thrown out a criminal case against Donald Trump, who was charged with hoarding government documents and classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago compound after leaving office, then obstructing law enforcement attempts to get them back.

The bombshell decision from Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, argues that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution and “usurps” the role of Congress in funding that office.

A ruling in the case arrives at the beginning of the Republican National Convention, where Trump is expected to formally receive the party’s nomination for the presidency after he was nearly killed at a campaign event in Pennsylvania.

Smith’s team will appeal Cannon’s ruling, which could bring yet another legal fight involving the former president to the Supreme Court, where three of his appointees are seated. But it gives Trump another legal victory after the nation’s highest court granted him sweeping “immunity” from some criminal prosecution.

“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,” special counsel spokesperson Peter Carr said on Monday. “The Justice Department has authorized the Special Counsel to appeal the court’s order.”

In her order on Monday, Judge Cannon wrote that “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,”

“The Court is convinced 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,” according to Cannon.

Trump’s attorneys have filed several long-shot attempts to delay and ultimately dismiss the case — widely considered among the strongest against him — as he navigates his campaign for the presidency.

Trump hailed the decision on his Truth Social, arguing that the dismissal “should be just the first step” in ending the “witch hunts” against him. Trump was criminally convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in New York, and he is criminally charged in another investigation under the special counsel’s office for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Trump also is similarly facing charges for election interference in Georgia.

District Judge Aileen Cannon, seen in a remote confirmation hearing in 2020, has dismissed the classified documents case against Donald Trump, who appointed her to the bench. (AP)

The ruling from Cannon — who has faced widespread criticism for her handling the case since Trump was indicted in June 2023 — appears to fly against precedents established by the Supreme Court and several other federal court rulings involving special counsels, which also operated under the Trump administration and other presidents.

Last month, Cannon heard a series of courtroom arguments over several days to decide whether the special counsel’s office was lawfully created, while Trump’s allies began fighting a similar battle in Congress on behalf of the former president in the hopes of overturning his indictments.

In court, Trump’s attorneys compared Smith’s appointment to a “shadow government” — a claim that Cannon appeared to reject— and argued there is no “valid appropriations that validates what’s going on” in the special counsel’s case, and that the office should not have access to “permanent, indefinite appropriations” to fund itself.

Legal experts and prosecutors considered the theory far-fetched, and it wasn’t adopted in court until right-wing legal groups began promoting it. Trump’s lawyers did not make the same argument to try to dismiss the federal election interference case, despite the fact that Smith is also prosecuting that case exactly the same way.

Trump faced 40 separate charges stemming from allegations that he withheld hundreds of classified documents after leaving the White House for his private Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, then conspired to obstruct government attempts to retrieve them.

Cannon’s 93-page order does not speak to the facts of the case or evidence against Trump but focuses solely on arguments against the special counsel.

Trump’s allies had insisted that the question should be taken up by the Supreme Court.

Justice Clarence Thomas went out of his way to file a separate opinion in the unrelated landmark ruling on presidential “immunity” to cast doubt on the constitutionality of the special counsel’s office, giving Trump and the judge presiding over Trump’s classified documents case more legal ammunition in his favor.

His concurring opinion effectively invited Cannon to grant Trump’s motion to dismiss the case.

Days later, Trump’s attorneys argued that Thomas’s opinion “adds force” to Trump’s claim that Smith’s appointment and funding raise “grave separation-of-powers concerns.”

Cannon’s order on Monday references Thomas’s opinion at least three times.

The office special counsel Jack Smith, pictured announcing a federal indictment against Donald Trump in 2023, was unconstitutionally appointed and funded, according to the Trump-appointed judge overseeing the classified documents case. (AP)

In a filing earlier this year, Trump’s attorneys argued President Joe Biden, through the Department of Justice, “is paying for this politically motivated prosecution of Biden’s chief political rival ‘off the books,’ without accountability or authorization.”

The former president and his legal team have pushed for delays in all his criminal proceedings in an effort to avoid a trial during the 2024 presidential campaign.

The first felony indictment of a former president followed law enforcement’s recovery of more than 13,000 documents, including 300 marked classified, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in 2022, after the National Archives and Records Administration had spent more than a year trying to get them back.

Following Trump’s announcement of his campaign, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Smith’s appointment as an independent prosecutor, in the hopes of insulating against the perception of political interference.

Still, Trump and his allies have baselessly accused the Biden administration of conspiring against him and leading politically motivated investigations in an attempt to derail his campaign.