Newsman: A Florida federal judge has dismissed the federal criminal case against Donald Trump charging him with amassing highly sensitive national security secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate and then obstructing government efforts to reclaim them.
Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Smith’s appointment as special counsel overseeing the documents case was unconstitutional.
“The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution,” she wrote.
Judge Cannon wrote that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional because it “effectively usurps” the authority of Congress.
Cannon, in a 93-page ruling, concluded that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. Smith is likely to appeal the ruling.
“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.
Jack Smith was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. The recent prosecution of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was also backed by a special counsel, a role providing greater independence from Justice Department oversight. Hunter Biden was convicted of lying about drug use when he purchased a gun.
“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,” Judge Cannon wrote.
Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents, including by willfully retaining national defense information after his presidency. Those documents allegedly included information on U.S. and foreign military capabilities.
Both Democratic and Republican administrations have appointed special counsels as well as independent counsels (a precursor to special counsels) to oversee investigations with greater independence and avoid the appearance of a conflict-of-interest in politically-sensitive investigations. Those appointments have been consistently upheld in court.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas joined his fellow Republican-appointed justices in ruling on July 1 that Trump has presidential immunity for actions within his core constitutional powers and that Trump is also at least presumptively immune for all his official acts. That ruling came in Trump’s federal election interference case, which is also being prosecuted by Smith.
But Thomas also wrote a separate concurrence that seemed to invite lower-court judges to scrutinize Smith’s authority.
“In this case, the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel to prosecute a former President on behalf of the United States,” Thomas wrote. “But, I am not sure that any office for the Special Counsel has been ‘established by Law,’ as the Constitution requires.”
Cannon cited to Thomas’ concurrence multiple times in her Monday ruling.
Judge Cannon wrote that the special counsel can be appointed and confirmed through an appointments process described in the Constitution, or Congress can authorize the special counsel’s appointment by enacting a statute consistent with that constitutional provision.
“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,” Cannon wrote.
Cannon also ruled that Congress hasn’t authorized Smith’s funding. She said she didn’t need to figure out what that issue, on its own, would mean for the case, given she was already dismissing it based on the appointment issue.
Cannon’s ruling came just days after a man attempted to assassinate Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, which prompted a rush of calls from his allies to demand that the four ongoing criminal prosecutions of the former president be dropped.
Smith’s team had asked Cannon for an opportunity to brief her — should she seriously consider invalidating his appointment — on remedies that fall short of dismissing the indictment.
But Judge Cannon said Smith had many opportunities to present alternative remedies, so she didn’t need to consider them.
Smith’s team argued that the history of such appointments over the past quarter century meant Congress had blessed such arrangements, but judge Cannon disagreed.
“At most, the history reflects an ad hoc, inconsistent practice of naming prosecutors from both inside and outside of government (typically in response to national scandal) who possessed wildly variant degrees of power and autonomy. The lack of consistency makes it near impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions about Congress’s approval of modern special counsels like Special Counsel Smith,” she wrote.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.
