The Florida judge presiding over President Donald Trump’s classified documents trial on Monday dismissed the case against the former president on the grounds that the appointment and funding of special counsel Jack Smith was unlawful.
In a 93-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, said Smith’s appointment was “unlawful” and unconditional. “The clerk is directed to close this case,” the judge wrote.
The decision came on the first day of the Republican National Convention and in the wake of an assassination attempt on the former president over the weekend.
Trump, in a statement referencing Saturday’s shooting, praised the verdict and said the other criminal cases against him should also be dismissed. A source who has spoken directly to Trump said he was “surprised” but “very pleased” with Cannon’s decision.
Smith’s team has indicated it intends to appeal Cannon’s decision.
“The dismissal of this case departs from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts that have considered the issue of whether the Attorney General has the legal authority to appoint a special counsel,” spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement. “The Department of Justice has granted leave to the special counsel to appeal the court’s order.”
Trump lawyer Christopher Kyes praised Cannon’s ruling.
“Judge Cannon today restored the rule of law and got it right for America,” Keith said in a statement. “From the start, the Attorney General and the special counsel have ignored important constitutional constraints on the exercise of America’s prosecutorial power.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel in November 2022 to oversee the federal investigation into President Trump’s handling and preservation of classified documents after he left office and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In court papers filed in February, Trump’s lawyers argued that the Constitution’s Appointments Clause “does not allow the Attorney General to appoint private citizens or like-minded political allies to exercise prosecutorial powers of the United States without Senate confirmation. Accordingly, Jack Smith lacks the authority to prosecute this case.”
The special counsel’s team argued that the attorney general has the legal authority to appoint “junior officials” and that past court decisions have upheld the attorney general’s authority to appoint special counsels.
Mr Cannon found the appointment inappropriate.
“Since November 2022, Special Counsel Smith has [he] “‘He did not lawfully possess it,'” she wrote. “Every action that arose from his flawed appointment was an unlawful exercise of executive power, including the indictment claims that are the current focus of this proceeding.”
The arguments by Trump’s legal team have also been made unsuccessfully against previous special counsels, including Robert Mueller, who oversaw the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and David Weiss, who is overseeing the prosecution of Hunter Biden.
It is unclear whether Judge Cannon’s ruling will affect the lawsuit against the president’s son. In her ruling, Judge Cannon specifically contrasted Smith’s appointment with Weiss’s, because Weiss was already a U.S. attorney and Smith was a private citizen at the time of her appointment.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Smith can now appeal the dismissal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will undoubtedly hear the case and hold oral arguments, but even if it is heard quickly and the appeals court overturns Cannon’s ruling, Monday’s ruling all but guarantees that the classified documents lawsuit will not go to trial before the election.
The decision has no immediate impact on the federal election interference lawsuits. Only the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court can direct the judge in that case, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, to issue a specific ruling.
Trump was first indicted in the case in June last year, with the indictment alleging he lied and conspired to mislead federal investigators in order to retain classified material, knowing that it would remain classified after he left the White House.
According to the indictment, the documents the defendants stole “included information regarding U.S. and foreign defense and weapons capabilities, U.S. nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for retaliation against foreign attack.”
In August 2022, the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Florida mansion and discovered more than 100 classified documents there, despite assurances from Trump’s lawyers that all classified documents had been returned.
He was subsequently charged with additional charges of attempting to obstruct the investigation, but pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Cannon’s involvement in the case predated Trump’s indictment: In 2022, Cannon granted Trump’s request to temporarily halt the FBI’s investigation into documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago and to send a special assistant to examine the evidence.
The decision was overturned by a panel of appeals court judges who suggested Cannon was “attempting to carve out an unprecedented exception to our nation’s law for a former president.”
The criminal case was randomly assigned to Cannon after Trump was indicted, and she has been repeatedly criticized by legal experts for her vague approach to the case. The case was scheduled for trial earlier this year, but Cannon postponed the trial date indefinitely, citing “countless” pending claims in the case.
Cannon’s ruling came just two weeks after the US Supreme Court largely ruled in Trump’s favor in a federal election interference case, finding that some of Trump’s actions as president were protected by immunity from liability and that Chutkan would have to determine which of his actions were official presidential acts before moving forward with his lawsuit.
The DC case was once scheduled to go to trial in March, but was put on hold while the Supreme Court addressed the immunity issue, meaning Chutkan would have to rule on the “official acts” issue before the case can go to trial, making it impossible to start before the election. Trump’s lawyers had not challenged Smith’s appointment in the case, but are likely to do so following Judge Cannon’s ruling.
The immunity ruling is also likely to have some impact on President Trump’s state election interference lawsuit in Georgia, which has been delayed until at least October while an appeals court considers whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be removed from the case.
Trump was originally scheduled to be sentenced last week after he was convicted in New York in March of 34 counts of falsifying business records. The judge in the case delayed the sentencing until at least September after Trump’s lawyers filed papers arguing the conviction should be thrown out with immunity. The lawyers noted that some of the evidence in the trial relates to Trump’s official duties at the White House. The Manhattan district attorney’s office is fighting to overturn or retry the conviction.
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 6-3 conservative majority, suggested that Smith’s appointment as special counsel could violate the Constitution’s provisions regarding appointment power.
“Absent a statute defining the special counsel’s duties, prosecutors cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot bring criminal charges against anyone, let alone a former president,” Thomas wrote in the ruling, which Cannon cited three times in his ruling.
Trump’s lawyers conveyed Thomas’ opinion to Cannon last week, saying it “adds strength to the motion on the appointments and appropriations clauses.”
In a response Friday, Smith’s office countered that the “single-judge concurring opinion … is not binding on this Court, nor does it provide a legitimate basis for departing from the uniform conclusion of all courts that have considered the issue that the Attorney General has the legal authority to appoint a special counsel.”
