Janice R. Andrews
In a very important legal move, Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked a federal appeals court to bring back the case against former U.S. President Donald Trump based on secret papers. This appeal comes after a controversial decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who threw out the case because Attorney General Merrick Garland was said to have hired Smith illegally. Smith’s team says this decision goes against long-standing Justice Department methods and Supreme Court law. They also say it could weaken the legal basis of many federal government appointments.
There is legal controversy over the dismissal.
On Monday, Smith’s lawyers sent a brief to the appeals court in Atlanta saying that Judge Cannon’s decision was not in line with past legal decisions. They said that the firing could hurt the operating credibility of the Justice Department and call into question the legality of appointments made in the Executive Branch.
In their brief, prosecutors said, “The Attorney General properly appointed the Special Counsel and is also properly funded.” They said that the district court’s ruling “misinterpreted the statutes that authorized the Special Counsel’s appointment” and didn’t take into account the long history of special counsels being appointed by the Attorney General.
Possible Effects of the Appeal
The appeal adds another twist to a case that has already been complicated by the law and taken too long to resolve. Many lawyers thought at first that the prosecution’s case would be a simple criminal one. However, the case has become complicated because of how Judge Cannon is treating it. Her choice to drop the charges has essentially stopped the case, and it’s not clear what will happen next.
If the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agrees with Smith and overturns Cannon’s decision, the case could go forward again. But it’s not clear when such a choice will be made, and even if the case is brought back to life, it probably won’t go to trial before the 2024 presidential race. This makes it more likely that if Trump wins again, he will choose a new attorney general who may decide not to pursue the case at all.
The Trump Campaign Answers
After the appeal, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement on Monday that the case was part of a larger political attack on the former president. As the campaign has said many times, the case is politically driven. Cheung said, “Not only should the dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida be affirmed, but it should be immediately joined by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts.”
The case involving the secret papers is one of four federal and state charges that Trump is facing at the moment. In this case, the charges say that Trump kept secret papers from his time as president at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, without permission, and he fought government efforts to get them back. All charges against Trump have been dropped.
There are constitutional issues at stake.
The case is mostly about how to read the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says how to choose certain public officials. For high-level jobs, the clause calls for approval from the president and confirmation by the Senate. But it also lets the head of an agency select “inferior officers” immediately. According to the Justice Department, Smith is a “inferior officer,” which means Garland could have made him special counsel without the president’s approval or the Senate’s approval.
Garland asked Smith in November 2022 to look into how Trump handled the secret papers and his efforts to change the results of the 2020 presidential election, which led to the riot in the Capitol on January 6, 2023. Both investigations led to criminal charges, but the one linked to the election has its own problems, especially since the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that Trump has broad protection and that case is now less broad.
Legal precedent and historical background
In their brief, Smith’s team talked a lot about how Attorneys General have long used special counsels and independent counsels to handle sensitive government probes. They used cases like the Watergate scandal and the trial of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to show that this kind of appointment has happened under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The brief said that Judge Cannon’s decision not only calls Smith’s appointment into question, but it could also call into question the legality of other special counsels appointed in the past few years, such as those looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents after he left office as vice president.
Previous Decisions by the Court
This is not the first time that Judge Cannon’s choices in the case of the secret papers have been questioned. In December 2022, a three-judge panel from the same appeals court reversed her choice to name a third party to look over the secret documents that the FBI had taken from Mar-a-Lago. The panel decided that Cannon had gone too far, which made the case even more difficult from a legal point of view.
As the court fight over Trump’s handling of classified papers goes on, the result of this appeal could have huge effects on the Justice Department and the whole process of making federal appointments. People will be very interested in what the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decides because it could affect one of the most publicized trials in recent U.S. history.
