District Court: Jack Smith Was Illegally Appointed
The United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira case was decided on July 15. Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith was prosecuting Donald Trump for allegedly possessing classified documents without authority. U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case on the grounds that the office of special counsel itself is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Smith filed 37 felony counts against Trump in Florida federal district court on June 8, 2023, alleging that Trump mishandled classified documents after leaving the presidency. On June 27, 2023, a superseding indictment added three more charges. Trump argued that the Presidential Records Act gave former presidents the right to take home classified documents. But Cannon dismissed the case before it went to trial on grounds that “Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”
Judge Cannon made this ruling after reading the July 1 Supreme Court ruling on Trump v. United States. By a 6-3 majority, the justices decided that a president has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” thus invalidating much of Smith’s case.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas made a vital point. “The constitutional process for filling an office is plain from this text,” he wrote. “The default manner for appointing ‘officers of the United States’ is nomination by the president and confirmation by the Senate.” This called into question the entire practice of attorneys general and the Department of Justice appointing special counsels to prosecute certain cases, a practice started in 1875. “Whether the Special Counsel’s office was ‘established by law’ is not a trifling technicality,” he continued. “If Congress has not reached a consensus that a particular office should exist, the executive lacks the power to unilaterally create and then fill that office. … And there are serious questions whether the attorney general has violated that structure by creating an office of the Special Counsel that has not been established by law. Those questions must be answered before this prosecution can proceed.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel on Nov. 18, 2022, to oversee criminal investigations into Donald Trump, but Cannon agrees with Thomas that, since the office of special counsel, a powerful position, is not confirmed by the Senate, Smith’s involvement is unconstitutional.
Smith has appealed Cannon’s ruling to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, so the question as to whether or not the office of Special Counsel is a violation of the Constitution will soon receive closer examination. In the meantime, Donald Trump will be able to continue campaigning for office without undue influence from Smith’s prosecution. The landmark Trump v. United States case signals that the Supreme Court believes in upholding the Constitution’s separation of powers, so now the court system has to explain why a private citizen hired by a leftist attorney general has authority to prosecute a former president.
