Attorney General Merrick Garland suggested Tuesday that his lengthy legal career makes it unlikely that he illegally appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate alleged crimes committed by former President Donald Trump.
Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the federal classified documents case against Trump earlier this month, ruling that the special counsel was not lawfully appointed by Garland – a determination that made the Biden administration official bristle.
“For more than 20 years I was a federal judge. Do I look like someone who would make that basic mistake about the law? I don’t think so,” Garland said in an interview with “NBC Nightly News.”
The attorney general noted that his “favorite room” in the Justice Department is its law library to hammer down the point.
“Our position is, it’s constitutional and valid. That’s why we appealed,” Garland added.
“I will say that this is the same process of appointing special counsel as was followed in the previous administration, Special Counsel [John] Durham and Special Counsel [Robert] Mueller, in multiple special counsels over the decades going back to Watergate and the special prosecutor in that case,” he said.
“Until now every single court, including the Supreme Court, that has considered the legality of a special counsel appointment has upheld it.”
In her July 15 order, Cannon ruled that Congress was required to appoint “constitutional officers” and the legislature was also needed to approve spending for such a prosecution.
“That role cannot be usurped by the executive branch or diffused elsewhere — whether in this case or in another case, whether in times of heightened national need or not,” she wrote in her 93-page ruling.
The judge determined that “Special Counsel Smith’s investigation has unlawfully drawn funds from the Indefinite Appropriation.”
“The Special Counsel’s office has spent tens of millions of dollars since November 2022, all drawn unconstitutionally from the Indefinite Appropriation,” Cannon wrote.
“For more than 18 months, Special Counsel Smith’s investigation and prosecution has been financed by substantial funds drawn from the Treasury without statutory authorization, and to try to rewrite history at this point seems near impossible. The Court has difficulty seeing how a remedy short of dismissal would cure this substantial separation-of-powers violation, but the answers are not entirely self-evident, and the caselaw is not well developed,” she added.
Smith’s team is expected to file a brief related to their appeal in the case, which charged the 78-year-old Republican nominee for president with improperly hoarding sensitive and classified White House documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence after his presidency, by the end of August.
Trump faced up to 450 years in prison if convicted on all counts in the case.
