Trump categorised paperwork case dismissed
The classified documents case against Donald Trump has been dismissed by a federal judge in a bombshell ruling less than 48 hours after he was shot.
The former president was accused of taking highly sensitive files to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House.
Judge Aileen Cannon threw the case out based on ‘violations’ of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and Appropriations Clause.
She claimed the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional.
The decision has an enormous impact on Trump’s legal battles, and he now faces just two criminal trials in Georgia and federal court in Washington D.C.
He is waiting to be sentenced in New York after he was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The bombshell ruling comes hours before the Republican National Convention is set to gavel in Monday, with Trump flying in Sunday to stage a heroic return from an assassination attempt.
The ruling by the Trump-appointed judge comes amid complaints among Trump’s critics in legal circles that she took a long time making a series of procedural decisions that had the effect of stalling the case until the after the elections.
One of her recent decisions was to suspend a May trial date she had set months earlier amid disputes over evidence of classified national security documents.
The Justice Department could try to appeal the decision, having previously gotten an appeals court panel to overturn decisions by Cannon.
In December, the 11th Circuit vacated Judge Cannon’s ruling to appoint a special master who pored over classified materials seized from Mar-a-Lago in the case.
Cannon was able to draw support from a concurring opinion issued by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a concurring opinion in Trump’s push for immunity from prosecution. The DOJ had argued it didn’t have bearing on the documents case.
‘If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President,’ Thomas wrote.
More to follow
The classified documents case against Donald Trump has been dismissed by a federal judge.
