Special counsel asks appeals court to reverse judge’s dismissal of Trump’s classified docs case

Special counsel Jack Smith filed his argument Monday urging the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a federal judge’s surprise dismissal of former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case. Cannon’s ruling centered around arguments that Smith’s prosecution of Trump was illegitimate because, in her determination, Smith was unlawfully appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to his position as special counsel because he was never confirmed to his post by the U.S. Senate. Legal experts criticized Cannon’s ruling as running counter to decades of legal precedent set by other judges and appeals courts, which had rejected similar challenges to special counsels or other independently appointed prosecutors dating back to the Watergate scandal. In their filing Monday, Smith said Cannon’s ruling “conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the Attorney General has such authority, and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government.” Former President Donald Trump speaks to guests at a rally, April 2, 2024, in Green Bay, Wis. Scott Olson/Getty Images Smith’s filing, which characterized Cannon’s ruling as “strained” and “nonsensical,” cited a quote from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in which Kavanaugh, recounting his time serving under independent counsel Kenneth Starr, writes about the “deeply rooted tradition of appointing an outside prosecutor to run particular federal investigations.” Cannon was previously overturned twice by the 11th Circuit prior to Trump’s indictment after she granted his attorney’s request to appoint a special master to review evidence the FBI had seized in its August 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, then ordered the FBI to temporarily pause its investigation. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/special-counsel-asks-appeals-court-reverse-judges-dismissal/story?id=113153024