Judge Aileen Cannon Monday dismissed the classified documents case against former President Trump on the grounds that the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional.
Cannon, who has been harshly criticized for her previous pro-Trump rulings, ruled that Attorney General Merrick Garland had no authority under the Constitution to appoint Smith to probe Trump for taking hundreds of secret documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office.
The ruling only immediately affects the documents case. But if Cannon’s ruling is upheld, it would also effectively kill Smith’s federal election interference case against Trump that is pending in Washington D.C.
U.S. Senate via AP
Aileen M. Cannon (U.S. Senate via AP)
Several federal courts have previously upheld the constitutionality of the appointment of special counsels.
Smith is likely to appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the case could end up being decided by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.
Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents and defying the government’s efforts to retrieve them. Two Trump employees were charged with helping him move boxes of documents to hide them from investigators and even Trump’s own defense lawyer.
The documents were found by the feds after a court-approved search of Mar-a-Lago last August.
The ruling is not related to the Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling that former presidents enjoy wide immunity for alleged criminal acts committed while serving in the White House.
In a concurring opinion in Trump v. U.S., Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas mentioned his belief that the special counsel was unconstitutionally appointed even though that question was not at issue in the immunity case.
Cannon’s order came as Republicans gather for their national convention in Milwaukee and less than two days after Trump was lightly wounded in an assassination attempt.
Cannon had been mulling Trump’s demands to dismiss the case for months, raising eyebrows about the timing of her decision.
Cannon’s pro-Trump rulings during an earlier stage of the Mar-a-Lago documents case twice earned her sharp rebukes from the 11th Circuit.
Her colleagues in South Florida federal judicial district, including the chief judge, reportedly asked her not to take the case when her name was drawn at random. But she rebuffed those efforts and has repeatedly ruled against prosecutors since the case was filed last summer.
Cannon has slow-walked the case and had refused to set a trial date even before she moved to dismiss the case.