August 26, 2024
We all thought it was dead.
But as of today Special Counsel Jack Smith is trying to bring the classified documents case against former President Trump back to life.
In case you didn’t know back in July Judge Aileen Cannon — the federal judge in Florida overseeing the case charging trump with felonies for retaining classified documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago threw out the entire case against him… not because Trump was innocent. She threw it out because she agreed with Trump’s legal team who argued by appointing special counsels – like Jack Smith – the Department of Justice broke the law. Cannon ruled that special counsels violate the appointments clause of the constitution because they are not confirmed by the senate and not funded properly.
It’s important to note – the constitutionality of special counsels has been raised in federal court many times in the past but the judges in those cases usually dismiss those arguments outright. This was the first time a federal judge said a special counsel was not legal. In fact the Supreme Court also established that the attorney general has “appointment authority” in a case involving President Richard Nixon.
Well today – special counsel Jack Smith appealed Judge Cannon’s ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. In his more than 50-page ruling Smith is basically saying — when it comes to the actual law –Judge Cannon is flat out wrong and her ruling went off the rails. He says her ruling could jeopardize the other appointed officials not only at DOJ but the Department of Defense, Labor, Treasury to name a few. Smith made his point by quoting multiple laws passed by Congress establishing special counsels and…he even quoted from a 1998 Georgetown law journal article written by none other than — conservative supreme court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“For more than 150 years, attorneys general have appointed special counsels to investigate and prosecute some of the nation’s most consequential cases. This “deeply rooted tradition of appointing an outside prosecutor to run particular federal investigations,” Brett M. Kavanaugh, the President and the Independent Counsel, 86 geo. L.j. 2133, 2142-43 (1998), further confirms the lawfulness of the special counsel’s appointment.
It’s unclear when or if the 11th Circuit will hear Smith’s case. But he’s asking for them to not only hear oral arguments in this case but overturn Judge Cannon’s ruling on special counsels and let this classified documents case continue to move forward.
Read the appeal from Jack Smith here.
