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posted 1 month ago
On November 26th, the US Court of Appeal for the 11th Circuit dismissed the federal prosecution of president-elect Donald Trump following a request by special counsel prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith has been prosecuting Trump’s case on allegedly withholding White House documents, which was pending review at the appellate court.
Early on November 25th, a separate court hearing the election subversion case against Trump also dropped the case after a dismissal filing by Smith. This turn of events marked an end to the unprecedented political saga that saw a former president prosecuted for criminal charges for the first time in US history.
In June 2023, Trump and two of his employees, John Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, were indicted for illegally holding onto federal documents and obstructing justice. The special counsel prosecutor argued that Trump attempted to conceal classified documents and prevented the government from retrieving them from his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, resorting to 40 federal felony charges.
Trump pleaded not guilty and argued that he was legally allowed to have the documents under the Presidential Records Act. He maintained that the criminal charges brought against him by President Biden’s US Department of Justice (DOJ) were a political witch hunt to ruin his presidential campaign.
In August 2023, the DOJ charged the president-elect with allegations that he illegally tried to overturn his 2020 election loss. This was one of four indictments brought against Trump at both the state and federal levels, marking a historic move by the DOJ to prosecute a former president.
Trump’s legal team attempted to have all the charges dropped by arguing presidential immunity. The Supreme Court held in his favour, ruling that he could not be prosecuted for any actions that amounted to official presidential duties. After this ruling, Smith was forced to issue a new indictment in which he argued that Trump was not acting as the president when he sought to overturn the previous election, but as a presidential candidate.
Trump’s legal battles ended after his reelection last month. Smith stated that his decision to dismiss the cases was not anchored on the strength or merit of his case, but on the DOJ’s longstanding principle and belief that the Constitution prohibits persecuting a sitting president.
Even if Smith believed he could have kept the cases going into Trump’s second term as president, the president-elect had publicly stated that he planned to fire Smith and his team upon taking office.
In October, when conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump whether he would pardon himself or fire Smith, Trump replied, “Oh, it’s easy. It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds.”
Shortly after the court dismissed his last case, the president-elect took to his social media platform, Truth Social, saying that the case, like others he faced in Georgia and New York, was empty and lawless and should never have been brought in the first place.
According to Trump, the case was a political hijacking and a low point in the country’s history that such a thing could happen.
In both cases, the special counsel prosecutor said that he was dropping the charges against Trump “without prejudice”. This means that the prosecutor is keeping the door open for possible reopening of the cases against the defendant after he leaves office in 2029.
Recognising that his decision was based on the immunity that Trump would enjoy upon reentering the White House, Smith repeatedly said that such immunity was temporary. The special prosecutor stressed that he was faced with a delicate act of weighing the longstanding DOJ rule barring prosecution of a sitting president against the principle that no man is above the law.
Trump was set to attend his sentencing hearing in his New York hush money case last month, but the case was postponed indefinitely. In this case, the court found the president-elect guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The case was scheduled for sentencing on November 26th, 2024, but Judge Juan Merchan postponed the sentencing and requested briefs on whether the case should also be dismissed. The briefs are to be filed by December 9th, 2024.
As of this writing, there is no clarity on when the sentencing could occur, but the DOJ proposed that sentencing be delayed until Trump leaves office in 2029.
For months, the president-elect’s legal strategy was to delay the cases until after the election. His legal team was banking on the fact that if he won, his appointed attorney general would simply drop the prosecutions. Smith decided to dismiss the case, although without prejudice.
Trump did not manage to delay his New York hush money case, which was tied to his efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 election through a hush-money scheme. That notwithstanding, his sentencing for the 34 felony counts has been postponed indefinitely.
The dismissals of Trump cases mark the end of a chapter for the criminal attorneys representing him. However, a new chapter has opened for some members of his legal team, as they have been appointed to high positions in his incoming administration.
Todd Blanche, who played a pivotal role in the DC prosecution and in other cases, has been picked by Trump as the man to hold the DOJ’s No. 2 role as deputy attorney general.
John Sauer, who argued the presidential immunity dispute before the Supreme Court, has been appointed by Trump to hold the office of the US attorney general. However, both positions are subject to approval by the Senate.
Trump has vowed to pursue the federal investigators and prosecutors involved in the cases against him. The Guardian reported that in anticipation of the expected legal retribution, Smith and his deputies had hinted at early resignation from the DOJ before Trump’s swearing-in on January 20th, 2024.
Source: The Guardian
References: Truth Social
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