A federal judge in Florida dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump on Monday, saying the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon said Mr. Smith was a private citizen when Attorney General Merrick Garland designated him to pursue cases against Mr. Trump. That violates the Constitution’s appointments clause, the judge ruled.
“Is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution? After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no,” said the ruling by Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee.
She dismissed Mr. Smith’s case that accused Mr. Trump of mishandling classified documents by taking them from the White House and storing them at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Her ruling can be appealed, and a spokesman for Mr. Smith said he intends to appeal.
Judge Cannon delivered her ruling just hours before the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee and less than 48 hours after Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
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Mr. Trump, writing on Truth Social, hailed the ruling and said other cases against him should be dropped, including a business fraud conviction in New York and a civil sexual assault and defamation judgment.
“The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME,” he wrote.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, called the ruling “breathtakingly misguided.”
“It is wrong on the law and must be appealed immediately,” he said. He called for Judge Cannon to be removed from the case.
Questions have been swirling for months about Mr. Smith’s appointment, particularly among conservative legal scholars who said Mr. Garland stretched the law by appointing him.
They said the power to prosecute is a critical part of executive powers and those who bring cases must undergo the presidential nomination and Senate confirmation processes.
In testimony to Congress last month, Mr. Garland said he thought he was following Justice Department policy by naming Mr. Smith as special counsel.
“There are regulations under which the attorney general appoints special counsel. They’ve been in effect for 30 years, maybe longer under both parties,” he said. “The matter that you’re talking about, about whether somebody can have an employee of the Justice Department serve as special counsel, has been adjudicated.”
Mr. Garland was referring to previous challenges to special counsels, including one that questioned the appointment of Robert Mueller to investigate Mr. Trump while he was president.
In that case, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Mr. Mueller was “an inferior officer” who, under the law, did not need a presidential nomination or Senate confirmation.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas cast doubt on Mr. Garland’s thinking in his concurring opinion in the Trump immunity case decided on July 1.
Justice Thomas said Congress must create an office for a president to fill, and Congress has not specifically created a special counsel’s office. He said the laws Mr. Garland cited in appointing Mr. Smith were general in nature and didn’t conclusively justify a special counsel.
“If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President,” Justice Thomas wrote.
On Monday, Judge Cannon agreed. She said Mr. Garland circumvented the appointments clause.
“The bottom line is this: The Appointments Clause is a critical constitutional restriction stemming from the separation of powers, and it gives to Congress a considered role in determining the propriety of vesting appointment power for inferior officers,” the judge wrote. “The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers.”
The 40 felony counts in the indictment accused Mr. Trump of unlawfully taking classified government records to his Florida home and obstructing national archivists’ attempts to retrieve them.
Walt Nauta, a valet for Mr. Trump, and Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at Mar-a-Lago, were also charged.
Prosecutors said the removal of sensitive documents was a grave threat to national security. Until Judge Cannon’s ruling, the indictment was considered one of the more straightforward cases against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump insisted he had de facto power to take the records at the end of his presidency and said they were mixed with other keepsakes from the White House in an array of boxes at his estate. He also complained about the 2022 FBI raid on his estate.
Judge Cannon is overseeing Mr. Smith’s classified documents prosecution.
Mr. Smith is handling another criminal prosecution in the District of Columbia, overseen by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. This one accuses Mr. Trump of trying to upend the results of the 2020 election.
That case is on hold as all sides grapple with the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. The court found that at least some of Mr. Trump’s actions related to the election were protected by presidential immunity.
Mr. Trump also faces state racketeering charges in Georgia stemming from his 2020 election actions.
He was convicted in a court in New York of falsifying business records. Mr. Trump is awaiting sentencing but has challenged the guilty verdict in that case in light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
Before he was named special counsel in November 2022, Mr. Smith was a prosecutor investigating war crimes in Kosovo for an international court in The Hague. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York and later as head of the Justice Department’s anti-corruption unit.
The ruling Monday adds to a string of high-profile losses for Mr. Smith, who led the failed prosecution of former Sen. John Edwards. A unanimous Supreme Court ruling overturned the conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, whom he also prosecuted.
When he tapped Mr. Smith to take over the Trump investigations, Mr. Garland called him “the right choice to complete these matters in an even-handed and urgent matter.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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