Donald Trump’s Classified Documents Case Is Dismissed by Federal Judge He Appointed

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, made the ruling on Monday, July 15, after delaying his case for several months.

One of  Donald Trump’s criminal cases has been dismissed by a Florida judge.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled in a court filing that the federal classified documents trial would be dismissed because Special Counsel Jack Smith’s “appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”

Former President Trump had filed a motion to dismiss the indictment arguing that Smith had been unlawfully appointed.

The ruling comes months after Cannon, who was appointed to her role by Trump, ruled that the federal classified documents trial in Florida would be postponed indefinitely due to multiple pretrial issues. The trial was initially scheduled to take place in August 2023 before facing numerous delays.

The federal classified documents case against Trump centered around how he handled top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House. He was facing 40 felony counts, including a violation of the Espionage Act. 

In the filing, Cannon — who’s been accused by critics of being partial to Trump — offered a criticism of the executive branch’s handling of the case, particularly when it came to the appointment of a special counsel.

“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,” Cannon wrote in the ruling.

Since leaving office, Trump has been hit with four indictments — two of them at the federal level — and charged with 88 felony counts.

But some of those cases have stalled more recently. Earlier this month, a Supreme Court ruling deemed that Trump is partially immune from his 2020 election subversion charges. Former presidents, the court’s conservative majority asserted, are absolutely immune from being charged for “official” presidential acts that occurred while they were in office.

One of his criminal cases did go to trial in April, and resulted in a guilty verdict on all counts in May. A Manhattan jury in that case determined that he falsified 34 business records in order to conceal a scheme to corrupt the results of the 2016 presidential election. His Manhattan sentencing has been postponed until September while the New York Supreme Court weighs whether the conviction can stand in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

The news of the dismissal comes two days after Trump was wounded during a shooting at his Pennsylvania campaign rally, and on the day that the Republican National Convention begins.