On Tuesday, a federal appeals court granted special counsel Jack Smith’s request to end the case against President-elect Donald Trump stemming from his alleged mishandling of sensitive government documents, effectively concluding the historic and unprecedented case against the nation’s former and future president.
A short order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said that it had agreed to Smith’s request to throw out the appeal for Trump. On Monday, the special counsel asked the court in Atlanta to drop his efforts to bring the case back to life.
He did this by pointing out that Trump had just defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election and that it is against Justice Department policy to prosecute a sitting president.
Early this year, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was in charge of Trump’s case, said that the charges should be dropped because Smith was appointed illegally. The special counsel took issue with the decision and asked the 11th Circuit to not hear his case.
“The American people gave President Trump a clear mandate to make America great again when they re-elected him.” Smith asked the DOJ to end the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump.
“Today’s decision is a major victory for the rule of law,” Trump’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in a statement.
“The American people and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.”
In his brief to the 11th Circuit, Smith mentioned a separate request to throw out his other case against Trump, which is about an alleged plot to change the results of the 2020 election.
In that letter to a federal judge in Washington, D.C., the special counsel said that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel had told them that “the department’s position is that the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
The federal judge in charge of the 2020 election case agreed to drop the charges against Trump just hours after Smith made his request.
This ended the months-long case against the president-elect. When the appeal against Trump is thrown out, the lower court’s decision to drop the charges against him stays in place. Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira are two of Trump’s co-defendants.
The appeal will go on for them because, unlike the president-elect, “no principle of temporary immunity applies to them,” Smith wrote.
“The special counsel’s decision to proceed in this case even after dismissing it against President Trump is an unsurprising tribute to the poor judgment that led to the indictment against Mr. De Oliveira in the first place,” de Oliveira’s lawyer, John Irving, said in a statement. ”
You should not do something just because you can.” It is okay with us if they want a slow acquittal.
Nauta’s lawyer refused to say anything.
In June 2023, a grand jury brought charges against Trump, making him the first former president to face federal charges.
A court-ordered search of Trump’s South Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, by FBI agents in August 2022 found more than 100 classified documents that he kept after his first term ended in January 2021. This led to the prosecution.
Following the search, Trump started a separate legal battle that led to the appointment of a third party to look over the FBI-stolen documents. However, in late 2022, the 11th Circuit decided to end that review.
In November of that year, Attorney General Merrick Garland put Smith in charge of the federal investigation into how Trump handled sensitive government records.
Smith also went after charges against the president-elect for illegally keeping national defense information and trying to stop the Justice Department’s investigation.
Aides Nauta and de Oliveira, who was in charge of the property, were charged with Trump as well as Mar-a-Lago.
All charges were dropped against Trump, Nauta, and de Oliveira. The president-elect said that he was being prosecuted because it was politically motivated and meant to hurt his chances of getting a second term.
The prosecutors used court documents to show how Trump is said to have kept records with the nation’s secrets at his resort and how he and his co-defendants are said to have worked together to lie to federal investigators and stop their investigation.
They sent pictures of boxes of stuff stacked on the stage in the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago and in a bathroom on the property.
Other pictures the FBI took during its search in August 2022 show boxes of records in a storage room and in Trump’s office.
Prosecutors said that some of the records contained highly sensitive information, as well as personal items and other mementos from his time in office.
The trial was supposed to start on May 20, 2024, but Cannon pushed it back weeks before it was due to start.
The president-elect and his lawyers tried to get the case against him thrown out for a number of reasons, including saying that he was unfairly prosecuted, that he was immune from federal charges because he was president, and that Smith’s appointment was against the Constitution.
Trump was able to convince Cannon that the appointment of the special counsel and the money for his office were illegal, and in July she threw out the case.
Smith, however, took the decision to the 11th Circuit for review. He and Trump’s lawyers both sent the court papers with their thoughts on Cannon’s decision, but the court had not set a date for arguments yet. The 11th Circuit is decision was likely to end up before the Supreme Court at some point.
Smith brought two cases against Trump. One was about documents. In Washington, D.C., he was charged with trying to stop the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election.
The president-elect pleaded not guilty to all four counts against him. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Trump said that as president, he was immune from prosecution.
Lawyers for the people in Fulton County, Georgia, and New York City also charged him in separate cases.
A hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels after the 2016 election led to the New York case. In May, a jury found Trump guilty of 34 felonies, making him the first former president to be found guilty of a crime.
His sentence was supposed to happen last month in New York, but it was pushed back.
It was said that Trump was planning to change the results of the 2020 election in Georgia in the Fulton County case. He said he was not guilty of the charges against him in the large racketeering case brought by District Attorney Fani Willis.
But the case had been put on hold while a state appeals court thought about whether Willis should be removed from the case. Trump won the election, but it is not clear how that will affect his case in Fulton County.
The fact that Trump was running for a second term made his prosecutions more difficult, since most people thought his federal cases would be dropped if he won.
Now, Smith has tried to stop both of the historic trials of the late president and the next president.
As required by special counsel rules, Smith is likely to file a final report with the attorney general. He is also likely to step down before Trump is sworn in on January 20, according to two sources who have previously talked to CBS News about Smith’s plans.
Garland promised to make public all special counsel reports finished during his time in office, and he has so far kept that promise.
He is likely to do the same for Smith’s report as well. After turning in their reports, past special counsels have testified before Congress, and Smith could do the same.
If the release of Smith’s findings is put off until the Trump administration starts, the chances of it happening become less likely, since the president-elect has said he wants to put many of his best defense lawyers in charge positions in the Justice Department.
In the two federal cases and in New York, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove defended Trump.
They are now going to be named deputy attorney general and principal associate deputy attorney general, which are both very important jobs in the Justice Department.
Trump has said that he will put forward Pam Bondi, who used to be attorney general of Florida, for the top job as attorney general.
