A federal judge has dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, citing constitutional concerns over the appointment of the special counsel overseeing the investigation. The decision, reported by the US media, marks a significant turn in the high-profile legal battle and comes days after Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, citing constitutional concerns over the appointment of the special counsel overseeing the investigation. The decision marks a significant turn in the high-profile legal battle and comes on the opening day of the Republican National Convention.
In her ruling on Monday, Judge Cannon stated that 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 dismissal, handed down by Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, removes one of the major legal challenges facing the former president. Many legal experts had considered the classified documents case to be the strongest among the four pending cases against Trump.
Last year, Smith had charged Trump with taking classified documents from the White House and resisting government efforts to retrieve them. Trump had pleaded not guilty to these charges. The ruling also potentially impacts other cases brought by Smith against Trump, including federal charges in Washington, DC, related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump still faces a state-level election subversion case in Georgia and was convicted of state crimes in New York earlier this year for his role in a hush money payment scheme before the 2016 election.
Trump's motion to dismiss the case under the appointments clause was initially viewed as unlikely to succeed, given that several special counsels, even during his own administration, operated similarly. However, the argument gained traction when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised questions about the legality of the special counsel's office in a footnote of the court's presidential immunity decision.
During a hearing several weeks before her decision, Judge Cannon pressed attorneys to explain the funding of Smith's investigation into Trump. The questioning was so pointed that special counsel attorney James Pearce argued that even if the case were dismissed due to an appointments clause issue, the Justice Department was prepared to fund Smith's cases through trial if necessary.
