Judge Cannon dismisses classified documents case against Trump in Florida
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Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed a federal case against former President Donald Trump over his handling of highly classified documents in Florida, ruling that the Justice Department’s appointment of a special counsel to prosecute the case was in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, stood accused of taking some of the most secret documents in the U.S. government’s possession to his Florida home after leaving the White House in 2021, and then scheming to keep them from investigators attempting to recover them.
The special counsel, Jack Smith, has the ability to appeal the case, which had been bogged down by delays in Cannon’s courtroom for over a year before her dismissal order on Monday. In a statement Monday evening, Smith’s office said the Justice Department had given it the green light to do so.
“The dismissal of the case deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue that the Attorney General is statutorily authorized to appoint a Special Counsel,” said Peter Carr, spokesman for Smith’s Office.
In a statement earlier in the day, Trump said that all of the legal challenges against him should be dismissed or dropped in light of an attempted assassination against him over the weekend.
“As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts,” Trump wrote. “The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as an independent counsel in 2022 to oversee investigations of Trump in order to ensure the cases were protected from any political influence from the Justice Department.
Yet, in her order, Cannon wrote the indictment was dismissed “because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”
“Special Counsel Smith was not nominated by the President or confirmed by the Senate, as would be required for the appointment of a principal officer or for the appointment of an inferior officer as to which Congress has not authorized such appointment,” she wrote.
Cannon further argued that the attorney general lacks authority to appoint special counsels with broad investigative authorities, and that the Justice Department used an improper funding mechanism to finance Smith’s office.
Her argument echoes a concurring opinion written in a recent case before the U.S. Supreme Court by Justice Clarence Thomas — joined by no other justices on the high court — in which he stated he was “not sure that any office for the Special Counsel has been ‘established by Law.’”
“In this case, the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel to prosecute a former President on behalf of the United States,” Thomas wrote. “Questions remain as to whether the Attorney General filled that office in compliance with the Appointments Clause.”
ONE YEAR AGO: Florida federal Judge Aileen Cannon ‘slammed’ by appeals court in Trump case
The constitutionality of special counsels has repeatedly been tested and upheld in other courts. Challenges to special prosecutors that have investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, have all been dismissed.
But Cannon took a novel approach to the former president’s legal argument, scheduling days of hearings and opening up the hearings to testimony from third parties to the case — a rarity in federal trial court.
The constitutional challenge to Smith’s authority could also compromise his case in the District of Columbia, where he has indicted Trump over his role in attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.
CANNON CONTROVERSY
Critics of Cannon have questioned her tactics throughout the trial, in which she spent months deliberating over simple pretrial motions.
The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit would consider any appellate motion filed by Smith. But the case is even less likely than it was before to reach trial, now that it has been dismissed, before the 2024 presidential election, where Trump is currently favored to win back the White House.
Miami criminal defense attorney David Oscar Markus said there’s a chance the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit could overturn Cannon’s ruling in the documents case, “but the problem is timing.”
“It is very unlikely that the appellate court would get this case ruled on before the election,” Markus said. “And assuming Trump is elected, this case goes away because Trump’s Justice Department would not pursue it.”
And even if Trump is not elected, Markus said, the case will ultimately go to the U.S. Supreme Court and “former President Trump knows for sure he has a strong ally with Justice Thomas on this issue.”
“We have not heard from the other eight justices on their position on this issue but, in light of recent cases, we can guess how this might come out in the Supreme Court,” Markus said, referring, in part, to the highest court’s recent immunity ruling favoring Trump. “I think Trump and his legal team must be feeling very, very positive right now about the prospects.”
Smith’s indictment of Trump in Florida detailed boxes of highly classified documents being brought down to his Mar-a-Lago estate and scattered, unsecured, throughout the property, including in his office, in a bathroom, and in widely trafficked spaces throughout the country club.
Federal agents approached Trump’s team to recover the files after being alerted to their existence by the National Archives, which had tried and failed for months to reclaim the documents on their own. Trump and his aides continued in negotiations with federal investigators over several months, but refused to cooperate, ultimately prompting the FBI to execute a search warrant of the property.
An investigation revealed evidence of an effort by Trump to conceal the whereabouts of the documents, compounding the charges that Smith filed against him in federal court in Florida in the spring of 2023. The former president was charged with 37 counts of willful retention of national security material, obstruction of justice and conspiracy.
Trump has already been found guilty of 34 felony counts in a separate case in New York over a scheme to falsify business records in an effort to cover up a sex scandal in the days before the 2016 election.
But that case, as well as Smith’s two cases against him, all face new legal challenges after the Supreme Court found last month that presidents enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for performing their core constitutional duties, and a presumption of immunity for much of their other work while in office. Trump’s legal teams in New York, Florida and Washington are all filing motions in their respective cases arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision undercut the prosecutions against him.
Cannon has served as the U.S. district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida since being appointed by Trump in 2020.
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau reporter Alexandra Glorioso contributed to this report.
