Monday, July 15, 2024 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.
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