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Special Counsel Jack Smith (pictured left) asked a Florida court on Monday to revive the documents cases against Donald Trump in the latest twist in the former president’s legal battles. Trump claimed a major victory last month when Judge Aileen Cannon delivered a bombshell ruling that Smith had been appointed illegally and had no legal authority to bring the case.
But in his appeal, Smith argued that her decision broke with decades of precedent and would upend the work of prosecutors. ‘Congress has bestowed on the Attorney General, like the heads of many Executive Departments, broad authority to structure the agency he leads to carry out the responsibilities imposed on him by law,’ Smith and his team wrote.
‘The district court’s contrary view conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the Attorney General has such authority, and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government.’
Trump’s lawyers challenged Smith’s appointment using a little argued theory that the special counsel’s office was not set up by Congress and that he was not confirmed by the Senate. Judge Aileen Cannon (pictured), who was appointed by Trump, ruled in their favor, also saying that the office had been funded illegally. But legal experts quickly said her ruling was unlikely to survive appeal.
Even so, the decision offered a huge victory for Trump. It came days after he survived an assassination attempt and soon after the Supreme Court said he enjoyed broad criminal immunity for official actions taken during his time in office. The case included dozens of felony charges that Trump had illegally kept classified documents after leaving the White House and then obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them.
An F.B.I. search of his Mar-a-Lago home found hundreds of documents including classified files that should never have been retained. Smith was appointed special counsel in November 2022 to lead the investigation and to investigate Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all the charges. The Department of Justice quickly indicated that it would appeal the decision to throw out the charges and would try to revive the case. ‘The Court should reverse the dismissal order and remand for further proceedings,’ wrote Smith and his team in their 81-page filing.
They warned that failing to overturn the ruling would jeopardize other cases brought by the Justice Department and ‘call into question hundreds of appointments throughout the Executive Branch.’ At one time the documents case appeared to be the most straightforward and most significant of the four criminal cases against Trump.
Evidence includes an audio recording and surveillance video. Two other cases against Trump remain stalled, while a New York jury in May found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
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