A man wears a mask of Donald Trump in front of the Alto Lee Adams Sr. U.S. Courthouse in Florida on February 12.
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A man wears a mask of Donald Trump in front of the Alto Lee Adams Sr. U.S. Courthouse in Florida on February 12.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
On Monday, Donald Trump became the official presidential nominee of the GOP at the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin.
Within hours of the opening gavel, we also learned who his running mate will be: Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
And Trump himself is receiving hearty encouragement from attendees and speakers in Milwaukee, as he recovers from an assassination attempt at a campaign rally on Saturday.
While one branch of the Justice Department continues the investigation into the motive of the man who fired the shots, on Monday morning a federal judge made another stunning announcement: Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the entire federal case against the former president involving his handling of classified documents.
The documents in question include top secret materials the former president kept after his term in office. He also allegedly hid those materials from federal investigators.
Cannon’s ruling gives Trump a significant legal victory on the first day of the RNC.
Consider This host Ailsa Chang spoke with NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson about the legal issues in the ruling and its implications.
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Delegates are seen on the floor during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention.
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A surprise end to the classified documents case
Judge Cannon says the special counsel in this case, Jack Smith, was appointed unconstitutionally, and he lacked the power to bring this prosecution. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith back in 2022, but Judge Cannon says that only Congress or the president have that authority. She also says the way the special counsel has been funded is improper.
Judge Cannon’s opinion cited a recent writing by conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a different case against Trump. There, Justice Thomas basically invited Trump and lower courts to take up this issue of the power of the special counsel — which kind of paved the way for this opinion today.
Jesse Panuccio is a former Justice Department official in the Trump administration. He says Cannon wrote a serious opinion and was right to question the special counsel’s authority:
“Mr. Smith is a private citizen who has not been vetted by the United States Senate, not been appointed by the president, exercising the full power of a United States attorney, which is vast — which is the power to prosecute and imprison people, in this case the former president.”
Johnson says the practical effect of the judge’s ruling is to throw out the whole case, not just against Trump but also his co-defendants — his aides at the Mar-a-Lago resort.
But the Justice Department has the power to appeal, and Johnson says there’s good reason to think it will. Judge Cannon has been reversed by a conservative appeals court already in this case.
Many other federal courts that have considered this issue — under the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution — have all sided with the Justice Department.
Trump cheered the move and called for the dismissal of the other three criminal cases against him. He falsely claimed all of these prosecutions are coordinated political attacks and election interference by his opponent, President Joe Biden.But two of the cases are handled by state authorities — and the other two are overseen by the Justice Department, which says Biden has had no involvement.
A staffer displays Trump signs on the floor during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention.
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Where Trump stands legally
Johnson says if other courts follow this reasoning from Judge Cannon, it could mean both federal cases against Trump — the Florida case and the one in Washington over January 6th — are over. But it also has implications for the way the Justice Department has investigated sensitive allegations against political figures since the Nixon era. Lawyer Matthew Seligman says what’s at stake is every prosecution brought by a special counsel:
“The Department of Justice as an institution has an overwhelming interest in defending the constitutionality and lawfulness of special counsels in general. Not just because of the January 6th case, but because there have been dozens of these special counsels and special prosecutors over the last decades.”
The classified documents prosecution of Trump had been considered the strongest of the four cases against the former president. The bulk of the case in Florida relates to behavior by Trump after he left the White House, allegedly taking secret documents to his Florida resort, storing them in bathrooms and ballrooms where any guests could wander in and then refusing to hand over the papers when the Justice Department asked — even after the FBI searched the property.
Former prosecutors said that was as close to an open-and-shut case as the DOJ might get. Now, Johnson says at best there will be a lot more delay:
“And if Trump regains the White House, he could direct his attorney general to drop any appeal and bury this case for good.”
This episode was produced by Brianna Scott and Kai McNamee. It was edited by Patrick Jarenwattananon. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.