Left to right: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention, July 2024, in Milwaukee (AP Photo/Matt Rourke). The Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., June 2019 (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite). Special counsel Jack Smith at a Department of Justice office in Washington, D.C., August 2023 (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
After reveling over the dismissal of his indictment in Florida for allegedly failing to protect the nation’s secrets and then surviving an assassination attempt before being received at the Republican National Convention to accept the party’s nomination for the 2024 presidential race, the turbulent waters in Donald Trump’s vast sea of indictments would seem to be receding. But with a formal notice to appeal the dismissal of the classified documents case entered this week, a new swell is building behind special counsel Jack Smith.
In March and again in June, Smith set down arguments opposing Trump’s bid to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that he was not constitutionally appointed. And it is in those documents that one may be able to divine what Smith’s appellate brief to the Eleventh Circuit may say.
At the very least, it’s bound to be a history lesson.
Cannon’s ruling was controversially received by analysts and legal experts alike because it flouted long-standing findings on the appointments and roles of special counsels and instead heavily relied on a sole concurring opinion issued by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to reach its end. Smith will likely be bound, as he wrote in March, to elaborate on the precedent that has spanned “nearly 140 years and include some of the most notorious scandals in the Nation’s history.”
Where Cannon wrote that she found that “none of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment” appeared to give U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland a broad “inferior-officer appointing power” or even the mere right to appoint an officer like Smith to wield prosecutorial powers, Smith will likely refer the Eleventh Circuit to a higher power then she or they.
When Reagan administration U.S. Attorneys General Michael Mukasey and Edwin Meese filed friends of the court briefs arguing against his authority as special counsel, Smith wrote in June that “neither Trump’s challenge nor the Meese Amicus’s additional theories are novel or meritorious; to the contrary, every court that has considered them has rejected them” — even, Smith wrote, “authoritative decisions by the Supreme Court.”
Law&Crime takes a look at this and other key developments in Trump’s cases in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.
FLORIDA
CRIMINAL
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Trump’s indictment and wrote in her opinion that Attorney General Merrick Garland unlawfully appointed special counsel Jack Smith to prosecute the multi-count case.
In doing so, she relied on what she described as her own “careful study” and steadily invoked a concurring opinion penned by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to reach her conclusion.
Supreme Court lawyer and former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal weighed in on Cannon’s dismissal this week and with good reason: He drafted the special counsel regulations in the 1990s. Katyal called the dismissal of Trump’s indictment “cuckoo” and insisted it would be overturned on appeal.
Smith filed the government’s notice to appeal on Wednesday.
As it turns out, special counsel prosecutors had forecast an appeal long ago when it comes to what they argued was “clear error” in Cannon’s decision-making from the bench. The last straw just happened to be drawn this week.
Legal experts and legislators alike demanded an appeal of the Cannon ruling but Trump’s allies in and out of Congress celebrated the gift that arrived just in time for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. One lawmaker called it a “return to sanity.”
OF NOTE: On the heels of the assassination attempt on Trump, a man was arrested in Florida for allegedly threatening to slit Joe Biden’s throat and kill federal agents.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents as he is helped off the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
NEW YORK
CRIMINAL
Trump is scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 18 in the hush-money and election interference case. But don’t hold your breath: between now and September, that could change.
CIVIL
For his civil fraud conviction in February, Trump was ordered to pay $454 million and he was banned from operating any of his real estate businesses in New York for three years. He appealed and the bond amount was reduced to $175 million.
As for his defamation verdicts finding that he defamed writer E. Jean Carroll, Trump appealed and posted bond totaling $83.3 million but that hasn’t kept him from talking about Carroll and flirting with the potential of new lawsuits. After an assassination attempt, Trump referred to Carroll’s “fake claims” on Truth Social and once again falsely stated that he never met her and that “a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count.”
Left: Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll meeting (Carroll’s court complaint). Right: Trump pictured in Miami on May 5, 2024 (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via AP).
GEORGIA
CRIMINAL
The case alleging that Trump and 18 of his co-defendants engaged in a sprawling racketeering conspiracy aimed at advancing bogus electors and pressuring state officials is in a holding pattern, but this week the Georgia Court of Appeals set a date for oral arguments in the appeal to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the case: Dec. 5.
Oral arguments were originally set for October but were waylaid due to a scheduling conflict.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis watches proceedings during a hearing to decide if the final report by a special grand jury looking into possible interference in the 2020 presidential election can be released (AP Photo/John Bazemore).
WASHINGTON, D.C.
CRIMINAL
In a couple of short weeks it will be exactly one year since Trump was indicted on Aug. 1, 2023, by a grand jury for his alleged conspiracy to subvert the results of the 2020 election, disrupt the certification and intimidate voters.
For now, another week passes and the docket remains quiet as special counsel Jack Smith must decide whether to prepare a narrowed indictment due to the Supreme Court’s immunity finding.
Left: Special counsel Jack Smith speaks about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Aug. 1, 2023, at a Department of Justice office in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File). Right: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gestures after speaking during a commit to caucus rally, Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024, in Clinton, Iowa (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall).
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