The shocking decision by a federal judge to toss out former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case on Monday divided US lawmakers and prosecutors on Monday, with Republicans celebrating the “triumph” and Democrats bemoaning the “misguided ruling.”
US District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional, ending one of the former president’s greatest legal challenges before Election Day.
The decision came just days after Trump, 78, was nearly felled by an assassin’s bullet during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., which pierced his right ear and miraculously missed killing him by an inch.
“This is good news for America and for the rule of law,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement.
“House Republicans repeatedly argued that Special Counsel Jack Smith abused his office’s authority in pursuit of President Trump, and now a federal judge has ruled Smith never possessed the authority in the first place,” Johnson went on.
“As we work to unify this country following the failed assassination attempt of President Trump, we must also work to end the lawfare and political witch hunts that have unfairly targeted President Trump and destroyed the American people’s faith in our system of justice,” he added. “This development is a critically important step towards that goal.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) disagreed in a statement following the ruling — and called for Cannon to be “reassigned.”
“This breathtakingly misguided ruling flies in the face of long-accepted practice and repetitive judicial precedence. It is wrong on the law and must be appealed immediately,” Schumer said.
“This is further evidence that Judge Cannon cannot handle this case impartially and must be reassigned,” he added.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, had cited in her decision Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent in a July 1 ruling on presidential immunity that argued special counsel appointments could be unconstitutional.
Jim Trusty, who departed Trump’s legal team shortly after Smith unsealed the indictment last year, told The Post in an exclusive phone interview that the real “hero of the story,” however, was Ed Meese, the 75th US attorney general under President Ronald Reagan.
Late last year, the 92-year-old and other lawyers filed an amicus brief in the federal court docket arguing that Smith’s status as special counsel violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.
“Not clothed in the authority of the federal government, Smith is a modern example of the naked emperor,” the attorneys stated in a December 2023 brief.
“Improperly appointed, he has no more authority to represent the United States in this Court than Bryce Harper, Taylor Swift, or Jeff Bezos,” they wrote.
“When we got rid of the independent counsel statute, Congress never created a parallel special counsel statute that jives with the Appointments Clause,” Trusty said, before noting that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s attempts to create distance from the classified documents case “backfired” on him.
“One of the reasons [Smith] appeared to have so much authority is because the attorney general hid behind him,” Trusty added, as Garland made several public statements about his own independence. “And that’s coming back to bite him because Judge Cannon is saying, from all appearances, Jack Smith was running the show.”
“If Garland would’ve stood up and said the buck stops with me that might’ve created a different flavor for this opinion,” he added.
That oversight coupled with the mounting costs of Smith’s prosecution, which the Justice Department has spent at least $24 million on to date, made the indictment “a colossal waste,” according to Trusty.
The former Trump attorney predicted that Smith would appeal the decision — but also that it would prompt further questions about past special counsel appointments, including John Durham and Robert Mueller.
“No matter what: This case isn’t getting tried before November,” Trusty concluded, even with an appeal to the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit.
Reps for Smith and the Trump legal team did not respond to requests for comment.
Freshman Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds was reportedly on the phone with Trump when the ruling was handed down.
“He was excited, obviously,” Donalds told Politico. “He said, ‘Judge Cannon obviously made a great decision. Really happy with the decision and now hopefully that puts a lot of this stuff to bed.’”
President Biden had slammed Trump in an interview after the August 2022 raid that resulted in the seizure of classified documents at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate, wondering how “anyone could be that irresponsible.”
A separate special counsel investigation was later launched by Robert Hur into Biden’s own retention of classified documents.
That probe concluded in February, with Hur concluding Biden had “willfully” held onto sensitive files but opting against charging the president in part because a jury might well view him as a “well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
