A lawsuit alleging that Donald Trump obtained classified documents has been dropped after a judge ruled that the appointment of Trump’s prosecuting attorney was unconstitutional.
The case, expected to be heard in Florida, alleges that Trump took classified information from the White House after leaving office and stored it at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach.
On Monday, Trump-nominated Judge Aileen Cannon agreed with the former president’s legal team and said Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional.
“The superseding indictment is dismissed because the appointment of Special Counsel Smith violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution,” he wrote.
The case, one of four ongoing lawsuits against Trump, was previously postponed indefinitely. The decision to dismiss the case could now be overturned on appeal.
Responding to the decision, Trump referred to the assassination attempt against him over the weekend, saying it was the “first step” in his mission to “unite the nation after the horrific events of Saturday.”
He also demanded that other cases filed against him be dropped and called for an end to the “weaponization of our justice system.”
Judge Cannon was appointed as a judge in Mr Trump’s final year in office and has been accused by Mr Smith’s team of being in the former president’s pocket.
Trump’s legal team has argued that Mr. Smith’s office is unconstitutional because it has too much independence from the federal Justice Department that appointed him.
The judge said his decision applied only to the classified documents case, not to Mr. Smith’s election interference case in Washington.
Prosecutors alleged that Trump violated the Espionage Act by improperly storing 32 sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The charges carry a penalty of 20 years in prison if convicted.
A trial was initially scheduled to begin on May 20, but the case was plagued by various legal challenges and was not expected to be heard before the November 5 presidential election.
If he wins the election, Trump could pardon himself for federal convictions.
Judge Cannon’s decision is highly unexpected and will likely be appealed by the government to a higher court.
Trump’s lawyers argued that Smith’s appointment violated a section of the U.S. constitution governing public appointments because he was not appointed as a special counsel by the president or confirmed by the Senate in the case.
The decision was found to be in conflict with previous decisions taken by the Ministry of Justice regarding the appointment of independent prosecutors.
Judge Cannon’s decision, a major political boost for Trump, came on the first day of the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Trump has shifted his political strategy and called for political unity in the United States after facing an assassination attempt on Saturday.
The appeal was one of several legal challenges by Trump’s legal team in the three remaining criminal cases against him. He was convicted in the first case in May over “hush money” paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Trump has previously claimed that the lawsuits against him, including the two prosecuted by Smith, were a “witch hunt” launched by the federal government for political reasons.
Smith’s team has opposed all of Trump’s objections, which have been interpreted as an attempt to delay the trial beyond this year’s election.
The classified documents case has been considered one of Trump’s most legally dangerous cases. Previously public evidence shows boxes of documents hidden in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has denied wrongdoing.
The case was filed against the former president and two “accomplices”: butler Waltine Nauta and real estate manager Carlos de Oliveira.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said: “As we move forward in uniting our nation after Saturday’s horrific events, the dismissal of the Unlawful Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed by the dismissal of all Witch Hunts — the January 6th hoax in Washington, D.C., the zombie trial of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the New York Attorney General’s scam, the false claims involving a woman I’ve never met (a decades-old photo of her standing in line with her then-husband doesn’t count), and the ‘perfect’ phone call charges in Georgia.”
“The Democrat Justice Department coordinated all of these political attacks, an election interference plot, against me, Joe Biden’s political rival. Let’s come together to end all weaponization of our justice system and Make America Great Again!”