It has been confirmed that Special Counsel Jack Smith has filled a motion which is aimed at dropping all the charges against president-elect Donald Trump that were filed on the allegations that he has mishandled some classified documents and his effort to overturn his 2020 presidential election in the lead-up to the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S Capitol.
His first indictment came in June 2023 in a federal court in Miami on 37 felony counts related to mishandling classified documents that he took from the White House to his Florida home. They included willful retention of national defence information, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Fortunately, a Florida judge dismissed the case, but Smith’s office had sought an appeal.
After the indictment, the case was placed on hold for months as the legal team of Trump stated that the case was meant to reasons according to them were multiple. The team have stated that a former president can not be persecuted for offence he has committed in office.
Trump had further argued that the prosecution was politically motivated He has never publicly conceded that his election claims were, in fact, false, and he pleaded not guilty in both federal cases.
The federal indictment of Trump has been regarded as an extraordinary one in the history of America. The accusation was the first time a president was accessed or sought to illegally stay in power, mishandled classified information and attempted to obstruct a federal investigation.
The dismissal of the charges also marked a historic moment in the history of the country. Fifty years after lawmakers from both parties forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency amid allegations of criminal conduct in office, half of American voters chose to return Trump to the presidency.
With Trump’s victory in the November election, it has been indicated that the Justice Department’s longstanding position which has stated that a sitting president should not be tried or charged with crimes will now apply as soon as he takes over as the president on January 20th 2024.
Smith’s office wrote in Monday’s filing that that prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind.
The special counsel further stated that the government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed. But the circumstances have. The DOJ policy, which was adopted during the Watergate scandal, notes that Congress has the power to impeach a president if they commit crimes. It is designed to allow sitting presidents to perform their duties without being hindered by legal cases.
Mueller explained in 2019 that the legal position from DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel is the same one that helped Trump avoid being charged in connection with Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe during Trump’s first presidency. Mueller’s team decided that they could not conclude whether they believed Trump committed a crime since they could not charge a sitting president. Charging Trump was “not an option we could consider. Now the same OLC opinion is preventing Smith’s case from going forward.
Smith’s team wrote and noted that now that Trump has been re-elected, the special counsel’s office was caught between two fundamental and compelling national interests. It was further stated that on the one hand, the Constitution’s requirement that the President must not be unduly encumbered in fulfilling his weighty responsibilities and on the other hand, the Nation’s commitment to the rule of law and the longstanding principle that no man in this country is so high that he is above the law.
Smith and his team plan to leave before Trump takes office, one source explained to NBC News earlier this month. Special counsel rules require Smith to file a report to the attorney general explaining his charging decisions before he steps down.
Conservative judges on the Supreme Court handed Trump a sweeping victory in the case with its ruling on presidential immunity. The justices first took months to issue a decision, making it impossible for the federal judge in Washington overseeing the case, Tanya Chutkan, to conduct a trial before the election.
In one of the rulings in July, they gave the president cleaning new immunity from prosecution, finding that all of a president’s interactions with the attorney general were “absolutely immune” from prosecution. In a different opinion, liberal justices claimed that the ruling gave presidents the power to order federal criminal investigations of their rivals without legal consequences.
After the ruling after two weeks, one of the federal judges who was appointed by Trump and was in charge of the classified documents case, Aileen Cannon threw out all the charges against Trump accusing him of mishandling classified documents and attempting to obstruct the investigation.
The decision was widely criticized by many legal experts and Smith has maintained that he was going to appeal the decision. Cannon found that Smith had not been properly appointed as a special counsel. The surprise ruling reversed decades of past rulings by both liberal and conservative judges.
In August, a new federal grand jury indicted Trump on the same four charges in the election case, alleging that Trump’s inaccurate claims about mass voter fraud during the 2020 election were unfounded, objectively absurd, and ever-changing it was further stated that Trump knew that they were false. But the win of the election by Trump has now hindered Smith from pursuing the charges to the next level.
The spokesperson for Trump Steven Cheung has stated that the decision by the DOJ has ended the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump and is a major victory for the rule of law. The spokesperson further stated that the decision was a victory for the American people and President Trump wants an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.
Some of the January 6th defendants had told the judges that they were bad enough to accept the lies of Trump which were part of the statements that were made by the allies of the president Republicans in Congress and conservative influencers on social media.
The Justice Department is consolidated on halting the most obvious agitators before Trump returns to office. The president-elect has said he will pardon some indefinite portion of January 6 agitators, whom he’s called warriors, unbelievable patriots, political prisoners and hostages.
He is anticipated to hike through the Lower West tunnel, where some of the worst violence of January 6 took place, to be sworn in as president on January 20, 2025.
