Donald Trump received a major legal victory Monday morning when U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Biden administration’s classified documents case against him.
Cannon granted former President Trump's motion to dismiss the indictment against him, citing the unlawful appointment and funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith. The judge ruled that Smith's appointment violated the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, leading to the dismissal of the superseding indictment. Additionally, the court found that Smith's use of a permanent, indefinite appropriation violated the Appropriations Clause, though it did not address the remedy for this violation.
In early April, Judge Cannon had rejected Trump's previous attempt to dismiss the case, which was based on the argument that the documents found at his estate were personal records. Trump had filed multiple motions for dismissal back in February, employing various arguments, such as asserting presidential immunity and questioning the legitimacy of Smith's appointment.
Merrick Garland handpicked Jack Smith in November to investigate former President Donald J. Trump over the alleged mishandling of classified documents and the ridiculous case over the Capitol riot.
Cannon’s new ruling is limited to this specific case.
Garland called Smith the “right choice to complete these matters in an evenhanded and urgent manner.” But in reality, Smith is a hardcore partisan with a shoddy record whose sole purpose was to get the result the Biden administration wanted.
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Special Counsel Jack Smith's case against former President Donald Trump had been on shaky ground for months. As far back as March, it appeared to be falling apart.
In April, Cannon unsealed a trove of new documents in the case, revealing that an FBI agent had testified that the General Services Administration (GSA) was in possession of Trump's boxes in Virginia before ordering Trump's team to retrieve them. These same boxes, which the GSA had held and then ordered Trump’s team to retrieve, ended up being the ones containing classified markings. This raised questions about whether the Biden administration had set up Trump.
In May, Smith’s team admitted to misleading Cannon and tampering with the evidence used to support his case against Trump.
The case against Trump was widely seen as political because Joe Biden had classified information that he was never entitled to have stored in boxes in his garage for years but was not charged, even though he had never had the authority to declassify them.
In February, Special Counsel Robert Hur's report concluded that Biden "willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen" and that his actions "presented serious risks to national security." However, Hur wouldn’t bring charges against him because Biden "would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
You can read the entire ruling here.
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