Trump documents case DECOMPOSED, judge says Jack Smith appointment illegal

In what was hailed as a “seismic development” for former President Donald Trump, a Florida judge has just dismissed the classified documents case against him.

Judge Aileen Cannon found the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution in a ruling Monday.

“The superseding indictment is GRANTED because the appointment of Special Counsel Smith violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution,” he wrote in his 93-page ruling.

He has done it. The inner straight. Full coverage of our show today. https://t.co/ZNrk8qb0Rn

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) July 15, 2024

“In the end, it appears that the Executive's growing comfort in appointing “regulatory'' special counsels in the most recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny,” wrote the U.S. District Judge United based in Florida.

(Video credit: Fox News)

Cannon ruled that Smith, who was leading the prosecution of the case against Trump, was not legally appointed and therefore did not have the authority to bring the case.

“The dismissal of the classified documents case is a seismic development,” Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, wrote in X. “From the beginning of all these cases, I have said that the case Mar -a-Lago was the biggest threat to the ex-president. Now he is ruled out.”

Indeed, the stunning development follows the US Supreme Court's ruling earlier this month on presidential immunity. And it comes after a historic weekend when the former president was targeted by an assassin at his rally in Pennsylvania.

“After careful consideration of the fundamental challenges raised in the motion, the Court is convinced that Special Counsel Smith's prosecution of this action violates two structural pillars of our constitutional scheme: the role of Congress in appointing of Constitutional Officers and the Role of Congress in Authorizing Expenditures by Law,” Cannon he wrote.

The case centered on Trump's alleged retention of sensitive national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left the White House. He is also accused of obstructing government officials who were trying to retrieve the documents in question.

“The framers gave Congress a fundamental role in the appointment of chief and inferior officers. That role cannot be usurped by the Executive Branch or spread elsewhere, either in this case or in any other case, either in times of 'increased national necessity or not,'' Cannon wrote in his ruling Monday.

Box case dismissed! #DerangedJackSmith pic.twitter.com/VU9yS6kWpK

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) July 15, 2024

“In the case of junior officers, this means that Congress has the power to decide whether it wants to confer the power of appointment on a department head, and indeed Congress has shown itself able to do so in many other contexts statutes,” he added. . “But he clearly didn't do that here, despite the Special Counsel's strained readings of the statute.”

Smith is still leading the prosecution of Trump in federal court in Washington on charges he tried to overturn the 2020 election.

Senior Staff Writer
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida, where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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