Trump Classified Documents Case: Special Counsel Urges Appeals Court To Reverse Dismissal

Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday, 26th of August, 2024 urged a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court’s decision to dismiss the criminal case charging former President Donald Trump with mishandling classified documents.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in a stunning move in mid-July threw out that case on the grounds that Smith’s appointment violated the U.S. Constitution.

Smith in Monday’s court brief argued that Cannon’s ruling strayed from binding legal precedent, “misconstrued” the laws authorizing the appointment of special counsels and “took inadequate account” of the history of those appointments.

Cannon’s ruling “conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court,” that the U.S. attorney general is empowered to appoint special counsels, Smith wrote in the filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

“This Court should reverse,” Smith wrote.

He also asked for the case to be remanded to the U.S. District Court in southern Florida. But he did not ask the appeals court to remove Cannon, a Trump appointee, from the case.

Trump was charged last summer with several counts of mishandling sensitive government documents taken from his White House at the end of the presidency, and the GOP 2024 nominee also faces several obstruction charges for alleged efforts to hinder the federal probe into the materials. The former president and his two co-defendants – Trump employees also accused of obstruction – have pleaded not guilty.