JUDGE CANNON DISMISSES FEDERAL FLORIDA INDICTMENT AGAINT TRUMP
This could be the decision that finally gets her taken off of the case.
Gang,
The news media are reporting this morning that earlier this morning, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the indictment against Trump in the federal Florida prosecution. I haven’t been able to locate her decision yet, which reportedly is 93 pages long.
I will now link to, and quote from, articles in the New York Times and Washington Post covering the decision. Those articles will no doubt be updated by the time that you click on the links.
From the New York Times:
A federal judge dismissed in its entirety the classified documents case against former President Donald J. Trump on Monday, ruling that the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, had violated the Constitution.
In a stunning ruling, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, found that because Mr. Smith had not been named to the post of special counsel by the president or confirmed by the Senate, his appointment was in violation of the appointments clause of the Constitution.
The ruling by Judge Cannon, who was put on the bench by Mr. Trump, flew in the face of previous court decisions reaching back to the Watergate era that upheld the legality of the ways in which independent prosecutors have been named. And in a single swoop, it removed a major legal threat against Mr. Trump on the first day of the Republican National Convention, where he is set to formally become the party’s nominee for president.
Mr. Smith’s team will almost certainly appeal the ruling by Judge Cannon throwing out the classified documents indictment, which charges Mr. Trump with illegally holding onto a trove of highly sensitive state secrets after he left office and then obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.
From the Washington Post:
The federal judge overseeing the classified documents charges against former president Donald Trump has dismissed the indictment on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed, according to a court filing Monday.
. . . Other courts have rejected similar arguments to the one that he made in Florida about the legality of Smith’s appointment.
. . .
. . . In her lengthy decision, Cannon said the issue of a special counsel was a novel one that had to be decided before the prosecution could proceed any further.
“Upon careful study of the foundational challenges raised in the Motion, 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 concluded in her 93-page order.
The legal theory that Smith was illegally appointed and funded has generally been considered far-fetched. Trump’s legal team didn’t adopt the argument in court until conservative legal groups pushed it.
The former president’s lawyers did not make a similar request to dismiss Trump’s federal election interference case in D.C. — even though Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to oversee that case in the same way as the Florida case.
But the legal argument gained more steam earlier this month after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the presidential immunity case that the special counsel’s office needs to be established by Congress and that Smith needed to be confirmed by the Senate.
Thomas urged lower courts to explore this issue. The justice wrote that he tacked on his concurring opinion to the immunity ruling to “highlight another way in which this prosecution may violate our constitutional structure.
(Links omitted.)
Under Heading III.D in my nineteenth CCC newsletter edition, I pointed out that Special Counsel Smith has been waiting for Cannon to finally make a ruling—especially an “exceptionally wrong” ruling—which would enable the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit not only to reverse her ruling, but to remove her from the case. Depending upon the reasoning she used, and the authority she relied upon, in her decision, this could well turn out to be that ruling.
I’ll have more to say on the subject as the reporting becomes more detailed.
Be seeing you,
Brian