Federal judge dismisses classified documents case against Donald Trump

(CN) — A Florida judge dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump on Monday, ruling that special counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed to his post at the Justice Department.

“The superseding indictment is dismissed because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution,” U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon wrote in a 93-page order.

Cannon’s bombshell ruling came in response to a February motion from Trump’s lawyers, who argued that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not have the ability to appoint Smith to oversee the federal probe into Trump’s handling of classified U.S. documents after his presidency. Last month, Cannon held a hearing in her Fort Pierce, Florida, courtroom to field the arguments in person.

At the hearing, Trump’s attorney Emil Bove argued that the provision of U.S. law Garland used to appoint Smith was actually intended to appoint federal employees, not officers like Smith.

Bove said that Smith’s appointment should have been confirmed by the Senate. Without that approval, Bove said that the appointment greenlights a “shadow government,” in which crucial federal officers like Smith are appointed without the proper channels for accountability.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, seemed skeptical at the time. The motion was one of several Trump’s lawyers had brought at the time in their relentless efforts to have the federal indictment dismissed.

“That sounds very ominous,” Cannon said in response to Bove’s “shadow government” assertion. “Is that really a realistic risk?”

“I think it’s more than a realistic risk, I think that’s exactly what happened here,” Bove said.

But Cannon’s Monday ruling makes it clear that she ultimately agreed with Bove’s argument.

“The appointments clause sets as a default rule that all ‘officers of the United States’ — whether ‘inferior’ or ‘principal’ — must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate,” Cannon wrote.

Prosecutors noted in June that eight judges had previously rejected that very notion, finding unanimously that attorneys general have the power to appoint special counsels like Smith. Cannon seemed to give little weight to that argument in her own consideration of the issue.

“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.

Smith plans to appeal Cannon’s ruling, according to a Monday statement from the special counsel’s spokesman Peter Carr.

“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,” Carr said in the statement. “The Justice Department has authorized the special counsel to appeal the court’s order.”

Trump took to Truth Social to celebrate the ruling, which he hoped would set the stage for the dismissal of his other ongoing criminal cases.

“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, adding a baseless claim that Joe Biden’s administration is behind his legal woes. “The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these political attacks, which are an election interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME.”

The sudden ruling is the latest in a string of Cannon’s controversial calls at the helm of this case, which have left many legal experts with eyebrows raised since the proceedings began. Cannon, who Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, previously delayed the trial indefinitely after it was slated to start in May.

She also kneecapped the federal probe in 2022 when she required prosecutors to run the documents — seized by investigators during their raid at Mar-a-Lago — through a third party before using them in the case. That ruling was quickly overturned in the 11th Circuit, however.

The New York Times reported that Cannon bucked several suggestions from fellow south Florida judges to step aside in the case because of her inexperience and purported ties to Trump.

As part of Smith’s investigation, Trump faced a 37-count indictment last year, accusing the former president of taking classified U.S. documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence after losing the 2020 election, then thwarting federal efforts to collect them. Trump was charged with willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act, obstruction and making false statements.

Garland appointed Smith in 2022 to oversee two preexisting criminal investigations into Trump. One of them was the classified documents case. The other was an investigation into Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which is still active in federal court in Washington.

Cannon noted in her Monday ruling that her order only applies to her jurisdiction. The ruling can be appealed in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Other federal appellate courts have previously upheld the constitutionality of special counsels.

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