WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump have urged a federal appeals court to uphold the dismissal of the case against him over classified documents. They say a judge was right when he ruled that the prosecutor who filed the charges was illegally appointed.
The case in which Trump was accused of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was long seen as legally dangerous for the Republican White House candidate, but US District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in July after concluding that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment to the job was unlawful.
The ruling brought an abrupt end to the case and ensured that no trial would take place before the November presidential election. Another case brought by Smith, accusing Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election results, was postponed by a Supreme Court opinion that granted broad immunity to former presidents.
Smith’s team has appealed the decision on the documents, calling the ruling by Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, contrary to decades of precedent. If the ruling stands, prosecutors say, it would call into question the legality of hundreds of executive branch appointments.
Trump’s team responded late Friday with its own filing, telling the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold Cannon’s ruling.
“There is no basis for Jack Smith’s unlawful crusade against President Trump, nor has there ever been one. For nearly two years, Smith operated unlawfully, supported by a largely unchecked blank check drawn on taxpayer dollars,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
They said Smith “has operated without the kind of oversight and responsibility typical of inferior officers,” with tenure largely his own and jurisdiction greater than that of presidentially appointed U.S. attorneys.
In dismissing the case, Cannon asserted that no existing statute allows the appointment of a special counsel by an attorney general, although Smith’s team has said as many as four allow it. She also said Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional because he was appointed directly by Attorney General Merrick Garland and not confirmed by the Senate.
But other special counsels, including Robert Mueller during the Trump administration and Robert Hur during the Biden administration, have been appointed similarly to Smith. Courts have rejected challenges to these appointments, Smith’s team has noted.
On Thursday, Trump’s lawyers in the 2020 federal election interference case in Washington adopted the same illegal appointment argument by urging a judge to dismiss that prosecution.
