Florida judge dismisses classified-documents case against Trump, ruling appointment of Jack Smith was unconstitutional (2024)

The case was widely perceived to be the most straightforward of Trump's four criminal cases. Smith alleged that Trump took documents containing government secrets when he left the White House in January 2021 and stored many of them at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where he lives.

Prosecutors said Trump repeatedly stonewalled federal agencies that tried to get the documents back and directed his employees to lie and mislead federal investigators — which ultimately led to a dramatic FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.

Cannon's 93-page ruling Monday doesn't call any of those events into question. Rather, the Florida judge ruled that the appointment of Smith violated the US Constitution's Appointments Clause.

Smith was appointed to the special-counsel role by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who directs Justice Department funds to his office. According to Cannon's decision, however, an office granted such far-reaching powers would need to be explicitly designated by Congress, which would have to fund the office by statute and confirm someone into the role.

The solution, Cannon wrote, was to dismiss the indictment against Trump.

"For more than 18 months, Special Counsel Smith's investigation and prosecution has been financed by substantial funds drawn from the Treasury without statutory authorization, and to try to rewrite history at this point seems near impossible," Cannon wrote.

The decision also dismissed the charges against Trump's two codefendants, Waltine Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, employees who prosecutors said conspired with Trump to obstruct the criminal investigation and keep the documents hidden. A political action committee controlled by Trump had been paying the law firms representing them.

On Truth Social, Trump — recovering from an injury after he was shot in an assassination attempt Saturday — wrote that all four criminal cases against him should be dismissed, along with E. Jean Carroll's sexual-abuse and defamation claims against him.

"As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts," he wrote.

Trump claimed without evidence that the cases were coordinated by the Justice Department and political in nature, even though the Manhattan and Georgia indictments were brought by local prosecutors, and a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her in a civil trial.

The Supreme Court could take up the case

Cannon's Monday decision will almost certainly be appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and, after that, could be taken up by the US Supreme Court.

The legality of Justice Department special counsels has been the subject of some debate over the past two decades. The statute that governed the independent-counsel roles in the Iran-Contra affair during Ronald Reagan's presidency and the Whitewater controversy during Bill Clinton's presidency expired in 1999. Since then, the US attorney general has appointed special counsels with less authority while relying on internal Justice Department regulations.

Defense lawyers in special-counsel investigations have routinely argued the appointment of special counsels is unconstitutional. Since a special counsel can impanel grand juries and bring indictments in any district in the country, they are effectively an "Officer of the United States," as described by the Constitution's Appointments Clause, a role that needs to be approved and funded by Congress, defense lawyers have argued. This Justice Department has argued that the arrangement is permissible because special counsels are appointed and overseen by the attorney general, who does have those powers.

As if to emphasize the point, Smith's spokesperson, Peter Carr, said in a statement Monday afternoon that the Justice Department granted permission for Smith to appeal Cannon's decision.

"The dismissal of the case deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue that the Attorney General is statutorily authorized to appoint a Special Counsel," Carr wrote in the statement. "The Justice Department has authorized the Special Counsel to appeal the court's order."

In her ruling, Cannon took a swipe at the executive branch in general, writing that federal agencies should be more prudent in appointing special counsels under their internal regulations.

"In the end, it seems the Executive's growing comfort in appointing 'regulatory' special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny," she wrote.

When the Supreme Court heard arguments on presidential immunity earlier this year, some legal groups and Trump's allies urged the court to consider the legality of special counsels as well.

While the Supreme Court ultimately didn't hear arguments on the issue — although it granted broad presidential immunity in criminal cases — Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion that he would find many types of special counsels unconstitutional.

None of the other eight justices signed onto Thomas' opinion, which Cannon cited three separate times in her ruling Monday. And lower courts have routinely upheld the legality of special counsels in cases involving Robert Mueller and others.

The immunity decision stemmed from a separate case overseen by Smith, in Washington, DC, over Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump's lawyers will now likely argue about the legality of Smith's appointment in that case, almost certainly causing more delays.

A jury in Manhattan found Trump guilty in May of falsifying documents to illegally interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Trump's sentencing in that case has been put on hold as the judge weighs whether the verdict should stand following the Supreme Court's presidential-immunity decision. Trump's lawyers argue that the entire case should be tossed because it was "tainted" with evidence that should not have been included under the Supreme Court ruling.

Trump's fourth criminal case, over attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia, is unlikely to be affected by the special-counsel ruling, but it may be further delayed by the Supreme Court's immunity decision. It's stalled as an appeals court weighs how to proceed after the case's top prosecutor had an apparent romantic relationship with a subordinate.

Cannon's decisions have often favored Trump

Cannon has handled the documents case slowly, making decisions that have often gone Trump's way. In May, she delayed the trial indefinitely, writing that she had too many pretrial issues she still needed to decide.

Before the indictment was filed, Cannon oversaw a legal dispute over the FBI's execution of the search warrant. She took the unprecedented step of appointing a federal judge in Brooklyn as a special master to sift through all the evidence the FBI collected and decide what could be protected under executive privilege — even though Trump was not president at the time.

A three-judge panel at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — composed of two Trump appointees and one George W. Bush appointee — reversed the ruling and said they could not possibly understand why Trump would need to hold onto classified documents.

"For our part, we cannot discern why the Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one hundred documents with classification markings," the panel wrote at the time.

Cannon has also entertained motions that would typically be dismissed out of hand by other federal judges. For some motions, she's permitted amicus briefs — arguments from unrelated third parties — which are uncommon in federal criminal cases.

In Monday's decision, Cannon wrote that Smith's prosecutorial team should have taken her more seriously.

"Both the Special Counsel and Defendant Trump submitted briefing; amicus briefs were received; and a lengthy hearing occurred," she wrote. "Yet startlingly, the Special Counsel submitted nothing on the topic of the proper remedy for the Appointments Clause issue."

Cannon's decision may end up being good news for Hunter Biden, who was convicted of gun-related crimes last month in a case brought by the special counsel David Weiss. His lawyers had signaled they would file an appeal challenging the legality of appointing a special counsel in the first place.

This story has been updated.