The Patriot Post® · Cannon Tosses the Classified Case
Donald Trump really dodged a bullet, and I don’t mean the one from the would-be assassin’s rifle. On Monday, just before Trump walked onto the floor of the Republican National Convention, ear bandaged and smiling to raucous cheers, Democrats got even more bad news about one of their lawfare cases.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon issued a 93-page ruling tossing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump for mishandling classified documents, explaining that Smith’s appointment itself “violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.” In short, the Constitution vests power in the Senate to confirm such appointees, and no federal law otherwise granted Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint Smith.
“Mr. Smith is a private citizen exercising the full power of a United States Attorney, and with very little oversight or supervision,” wrote Cannon, a 43-year-old Cuban-Colombian Trump appointee. “When scrutinized, this spotty historical backdrop does not amply confirm the Attorney General’s authority to appoint the Special Counsel here.”
Therefore, Trump’s motion to dismiss the case was granted, though Smith will appeal. The appeal process will take the case beyond the election, and if Trump wins, the Justice Department will almost certainly drop it.
The Washington Post harrumphed that Cannon “accepted a long-shot legal argument,” but the Constitution is not a “long-shot legal argument.”
Indeed, the truth is that Joe Biden’s attorney general used long-shot legal tactics, circumventing constitutional prescriptions, to appoint Smith as special counsel in the first place, knowing that politicized lawfare against the former president was the Democrats’ best hope this election cycle.
Even so, what a couple of months it has been for the former president. Yes, he was charged with 24 trumped-up felonies by a partisan DA, tried by a partisan judge, and convicted by a jury in Manhattan, which Biden won 84.5%-14.5% in 2020. But gleeful Democrats and Leftmedia parrots trumpeting the “convicted felon” line didn’t help Biden in the polls at all. Worse for Dems, Trump’s sentencing was pushed back from July 11 until September, and the entire case might even be — make that should be — tossed after the Supreme Court’s major ruling regarding presidential immunity. That ruling was another huge win for Trump and directly informed Cannon’s ruling. Both rulings could, in turn, affect Smith’s prosecution of Trump for January 6.
Meanwhile, Biden imploded at the first presidential debate after a pathetically transparent Leftmedia cover-up of his cognitive decline. Since then, Biden’s party has been in near mutiny, trying to figure out some way — any way — to dump him as the nominee and somehow salvage an election that increasingly looks unwinnable. Alas, Biden may have survived just as Trump did the assassination attempt.
Back to Smith’s case, our Douglas Andrews explained the constitutional case against Smith’s appointment back in January. And earlier this month, our Thomas Gallatin weighed in after Justice Clarence Thomas signaled to lower courts that, yes, Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. “If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution,” Justice Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion on the immunity case.
Still, the Post did get one thing right: “Trump attorneys have long considered the classified documents case to be the strongest of the four criminal cases against him — in part because the acts in question mostly occurred after he left the White House — and it was the case that most worried them.” I wrote at length about that very thing last June.
The indictment was gratuitously boosted by relying on specious legal arguments and statutes, and the August 2022 raid at Mar-a-Lago was outrageous, but the crux of the case was that Trump stubbornly and wantonly mishandled classified materials by keeping them at his home when his right to do so was at best questionable. The legal peril was real.
It was also a glaring case of two-tiered justice. Where was this prosecution of Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden? Or of Mike Pence, for that matter? Far more minor players — people without political connections or power — get the entire book thrown at them. So, apparently, does Trump, but powerful Democrats do not.
Maybe — just maybe — everyone should handle classified material carefully. Arguably, fewer things should be classified in the first place. Most definitely there should be equal treatment under the law.
Speaking of equal treatment, “unity” has been a big theme in the days following the attempt on President Trump’s life. President Biden has led those calls. However, if he truly wants to unify the country, he’ll call off the legal dogs and work to ensure an honest and fair election without lawfare.
Instead, he grumbled to NBC’s Lester Holt. “I’m not surprised” by the ruling, he groused, calling it “specious.” As for his own proven mishandling of classified material and Robert Hur’s Don’t Indict the “Sympathetic, Well-Meaning, Elderly Man With a Poor Memory” investigation, Biden insisted, “I didn’t do a damn thing.” Here’s hoping he can ponder that in retirement come January 2025.