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A federal judge in Florida threw out the prosecution of former President Donald Trump on Monday in the “documents” case because she ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith had not been appointed in a constitutional or lawful manner.
Judge Aileen Cannon granted a defense motion after ruling that Smith, who was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate as other U.S. Attorneys have been in the past, could not lawfully bring the indictment against Trump in federal court.
“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, according to a CNN report.
The stunning development came on the first morning of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and will excite an already emotional gathering in the wake of Trump’s attempted assassination Saturday.
Many conservatives believe that the slew of prosecutions — two federal, two state — and civil actions against Trump were part of creating the climate of hatred that could have encouraged the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
As Breitbart News noted in early June, Cannon scheduled a hearing on the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment, which had been raised by the defense as well as a number of outside amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs.
Last month, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested in a concurring opinion in Fischer v. United States — which said the Department of Justice had abused its power in prosecuting January 6th defendants under a statute about witness tampering — that Smith’s appointment was likely unconstitutional. Smith’s took aim at Thomas’s arguments in an unrelated filing in the case last week, which raised some legal eyebrows.
Democrats and media pundits have bemoaned the fact that Judge Cannon even chose to hear arguments on the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment. They even organized mass campaigns to file ethics complaints against her.
Smith brought charges against Trump in Florida — the site of Trump’s private residence at Mar-a-Lago — alleging that he had mishandled classified documents when he left office. Judge Cannon looked askance at the fact that Smith convened a grand jury in Washington, D.C. — a notoriously anti-Trump jurisdiction — rather than in Florida.
It is not clear if Cannon’s ruling affects Smith’s separate prosecution of Trump for January 6-related charges in Washington.
