Washington — Former President Donald Trump urged two separate federal courts to dismiss the criminal charges brought against him by Special Counsel Jack Smith, arguing in both cases that Smith was improperly appointed and lacked the legal backing to prosecute the to prosecute cases.
Trump’s requests were addressed to the federal district court in Washington, D.C., which is overseeing the case arising from the 2020 election, and to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which is reviewing a lower court ruling dismissed the individual case which arose from the former president’s alleged mishandling of documents classified as classified.
In the Washington case, Trump is seeking to file a motion to dismiss the four criminal charges against him based on the legality of Smith’s appointment of a special counsel. A South Florida district court, which is overseeing the documents case, ordered an end to that prosecution in July after finding that Smith had been unconstitutionally appointed and funded.
The special counsel appealed the decision earlier this year, arguing that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had issued an incorrect ruling. He is also expected to oppose Trump’s attempt to dismiss charges stemming from what prosecutors allege was an illegal attempt by the former president to retain power after the 2020 election.
The document case
The federal appeals court will decide whether to revive Smith’s prosecution of Trump over his handling of sensitive government data and alleged attempts to obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation.
But in a petition to that court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, filed Friday, Trump’s legal team argued that the ruling by Cannon, who was appointed by the former president, was sound and should stand .
“There is no basis for Jack Smith’s unlawful crusade against President Trump, nor has there ever been one,” his lawyers wrote. “For nearly two years, Smith has acted unlawfully, supported by a largely unchecked blank check drawn on taxpayer dollars.”
They argued that the appeal involved issues that posed risks to the institution of the presidency and said the district court’s decision was correct based on text, history, structure and practices.
Prosecutors allege Trump kept sensitive government documents at his South Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, after leaving the White House in January 2021 and obstructed the administration’s efforts to retrieve the documents. The special counsel also accused Trump and two associates of obstructing the federal investigation. He and his two co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, pleaded not guilty. Cannon dismissed charges against all three defendants.
The FBI recovered more than 100 documents with classification marks during a court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, and prosecutors later revealed that boxes of records were held on a stage in the estate’s ballroom, in a bathroom and shower, and in a storage space.
Trump has claimed that the criminal case against him is politically motivated and that wrongdoing is denied. He sought to dismiss the charges on numerous grounds, including arguing that Smith did not have the legal authority to file the charges at all because of the way Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed him in 2022.
The former president’s legal team argued that Smith’s independent position within the Justice Department was unconstitutional. But Smith’s team pushed back, arguing in court filings that the appointment of a special counsel was supported by Justice Department precedent that had been validated by other federal courts in previous cases.
The most recent involved the 2017 appointment of Robert Mueller to oversee an investigation into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, confirmed Mueller’s appointment in 2019.
Cannon held arguments for several days in June to consider the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment before issuing its decision dismissing the 40 charges facing the former president.
“The bottom line is this: the Appointments Clause is a crucial constitutional limitation arising from the separation of powers, and gives Congress a deliberate role in determining the propriety of granting appointment authority to inferior officers,” she wrote. “The position of the special counsel effectively usurps that important legislative power, transfers it to a department head, and thereby threatens the structural freedom inherent in the separation of powers.”
In addition to finding that Smith’s appointment violated the appointments clause, Cannon said the special counsel’s office withdrew money from the Treasury Department without legal authorization, in violation of the appropriations clause.
Cannon’s decision — and Trump’s filings — cited a concurring opinion by Judge Clarence Thomas in the 2020 election case involving Trump, which he sought to dismiss on the grounds of presidential immunity. The Supreme Court governed former presidents are protected from prosecution for official acts committed in the White House, and Thomas wrote separately to question the legality of Smith’s appointment. No other judge joined Thomas’s opinion and it is not binding.
Smith the 11th Circuit asked to review Cannon’s decision and revive the case against Trump, arguing that the special counsel was “validly appointed” by the attorney general and properly funded.
“In holding otherwise, the court deviated from the binding precedent of the Supreme Court, misinterpreted the statutes authorizing the appointment of the special counsel, and failed to sufficiently take into account the long history of special counsel appointments by attorneys- general,” prosecutors said in their opening letter to the court. court of appeal.
The question of whether Smith was legally appointed could end up before the Supreme Court.
The 2020 election case
Proceedings in the election case in Washington had been at a standstill for months while the Supreme Court questioned whether Trump was entitled to immunity from prosecution, but resumed in September. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, a federal grand jury was convened filed a superseding indictment which accused Trump of four crimes but reduced the charges against him to comply with the Supreme Court’s new framework for presidential immunity.
Trump pleaded not guilty. He is expected to again try to have the case dismissed on immunity grounds, but he also argued in a filing Thursday that the charges should be dismissed because Smith was improperly appointed. The former president also wants the judge to ban the special division and his office from spending any more public dollars.
“Everything Smith did since the appointment of Attorney General Garland, when President Trump continued his leadership campaign against President Biden and then Vice President Harris, was unlawful and unconstitutional,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
They said their proposed motion to dismiss the charges “affirms that this unjust cause was dead on arrival – unconstitutional even before its inception.”
Trump’s team argued that Smith’s nomination is “clearly unconstitutional” because he was not nominated by the president and not confirmed by the Senate.
Regarding the special counsel’s funding, the defense alleged that Smith operated with a “blank check.”
Smith is expected to take a turn in the coming weeks to cement his appointment and will likely follow the defense he has mounted in the classified documents case.
As a federal judge in Washington, Chutkan does not have to abide by the ruling in Trump’s other prosecution and has indicated that he disagrees with Cannon’s conclusion that Smith’s appointment fell outside constitutional limits.
During a September hearingChutkan said she did not find that ruling “particularly persuasive” and noted that she is bound by the D.C. Circuit’s 2019 decision upholding a previous special counsel appointment.
Trump is vying for a second term in the White House and has said he would fire Smith “in two seconds” if he defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
