WASHINGTON – Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed motions to drop all federal charges against President-elect Donald Trump related to his misuse of classified documents and his attempt to overturn his 2020 presidential election in the lead-up to the deadly attack on January 6 at the US Capitol.
Trump was first charged in June 2023 in a federal court in Miami with 37 crimes related to the mishandling of classified documents he brought from the White House to his Florida home. These included intentional withholding of national defense information, making false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice. A Florida judge dismissed the case, but Smith’s office had appealed.
Trump was separately indicted in August 2023 on four felonies over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction and attempted obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.
The case was then put on hold for months as Trump’s team argued that the case should be dismissed for several reasons, including the fact that a former president cannot be prosecuted for his actions while in office.
Trump has claimed the prosecutions were politically motivated. He never publicly admitted that his election claims were in fact false, and he pleaded not guilty in both federal cases.
The federal charges against Trump marked an extraordinary moment in American history — the first-ever accusation that a president tried to illegally stay in power, mishandled classified information and tried to obstruct a federal investigation.
Their resignation also marks a historic moment. Fifty years after lawmakers from both parties forced Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency amid allegations of criminal conduct while in office, half of American voters opted to return Trump to the presidency.
Trump’s election victory means that the Justice Department’s long-standing position that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime will extend to Trump after he takes office on January 20.
“That prohibition is categorical and does not address the seriousness of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s evidence, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government fully supports,” Smith’s office wrote in the filing Monday .
“The government’s position on the merits of prosecuting the suspect has not changed. But the circumstances are,” the special prosecutor added.
The DOJ policy, which was adopted during the Watergate scandal, notes that Congress has the power to impeach a president if he commits crimes. It is intended to allow sitting presidents to carry out their duties without being hampered by lawsuits.
That legal position from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel is the same position that helped Trump avoid being indicted in connection with Robert Mueller’s special counsel’s investigation during Trump’s first presidency. Mueller’s team decided that they could not draw a definitive conclusion on whether they believed Trump committed a crime because they could not indict a sitting president. Indicting Trump was “not an option we could consider,” Mueller explained in 2019. Now the same OLC opinion prevents Smith’s case from moving forward.
After Trump’s re-election, the special counsel’s office was caught between “two fundamental and compelling national interests,” Smith’s team wrote. “On the one hand, the Constitution’s requirement that the President not be unduly hindered in discharging his onerous responsibilities… and on the other, the nation’s commitment to the rule of law and the long-standing principle that “[n]o man in this country is so high that he is above the law.”
Smith and his team plan to resign before Trump takes office, a source told NBC News earlier this month. Special regulations require Smith to file a report with the attorney general explaining his charging decisions before resigning.
Important help from conservative judges
Conservative Supreme Court justices gave Trump a big victory in the case with their ruling on presidential immunity. It initially took months for the justices to reach a decision, making it impossible for the federal judge in Washington overseeing the case, Tanya Chutkan, to hold a trial before the election.
In a July ruling, they gave the president sweeping new immunity from prosecution, finding that all interactions by a president with the attorney general were “absolutely immune” from prosecution. In a dissent, liberal justices argued that the ruling gave presidents the power to order federal criminal investigations into their rivals without legal consequences.
Two weeks later, the Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing the classified documents case, Aileen Cannon, threw out all charges against Trump, accusing him of mishandling classified documents and trying to obstruct the investigation.
In a decision that was widely criticized by legal experts and which Smith vowed to appeal, Cannon found that Smith had not been properly appointed as special counsel. The surprise ruling reversed decades of previous rulings by both liberal and conservative justices.
In August, a new federal grand jury indicted Trump on the same four charges in the election case, alleging that Trump’s false claims of massive voter fraud during the 2020 election were “unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-evolving” and that Trump ” knew they were false.” But Trump’s re-election ended Smith’s ability to move forward with these allegations.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement: “Today’s decision by the DOJ ends the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump and is a major victory for the rule of law. The American people and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.”
Many Jan. 6 defendants have told judges they regret being “gullible” enough to fall for Trump’s falsehoods, which were echoed by the president-elect’s allies, Republicans in Congress and conservative influencers on social media.
The Justice Department is focusing on arresting the “most egregious” rioters before Trump returns to office. The president-elect has said he will pardon an unspecified portion of the January 6 rioters, calling them “warriors,” “incredible patriots,” political prisoners and “hostages.”
He is expected to walk through the Lower Western Tunnel, where some of the worst violence of January 6 took place, to be sworn in as president on January 20, 2025.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
