Special counsel Jack Smith has dropped the federal election subversion and the mishandling of classified documents cases against President-elect Donald Trump.
This came as special counsel prosecutors bowed to the reality that the cases would not be completed or proceed to trial before Trump returns to the presidency next year.
Trump has said he would fire Smith once he retook the office, shattering previous norms around special counsel investigations.
Smith wrote of the election subversion case in a six-page filing with US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, DC. “The (Justice) Department’s position is that the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
He added, “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant.”
Chutkan formally dismissed the case without prejudice.
Smith’s criminal pursuit of Trump over the last two years for trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election and his mishandling of classified documents represented a unique chapter in American history.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges in both cases.
The withdrawals marked the end of the years-long legal battle between Trump and the Special Counsel, and reflected the extraordinary ability of Trump to sidestep an indictment that would have sunk the presidential bid of anyone else.
Trump’s election victory was always going to spell the end of the criminal cases against him – over Trump’s retention of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election – due to justice department policy that prohibits taking criminal action against a sitting president.
However, the withdrawals also showed just how successfully Trump, with help from sympathetic judges, managed to beat the justice system with an audacious play of using a presidential campaign and the political calendar to sidestep deeply perilous charges.
In a post to his own social media platform, Trump said that all cases against him, including civil suits in New York resulting in multimillion-dollar penalties, were “empty and lawless”, orchestrated by his Democratic foes.
“It was a political hijacking and a low point in the history of our country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON.”
Donald Trump
Also, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate said, “If Donald J Trump had lost an election, he may very well have spent the rest of his life in prison.”
“These prosecutions were always political. Now it’s time to ensure what happened to President Trump never happens in this country again.”
JD Vance
A Shame For Justice
Responding to news that the special counsel Jack Smith had dropped all charges against Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and retention of classified information, Dan Goldman, a prosecutor turned New York Democrat and member of the House oversight committee, lamented “a shame for justice in this country.”
“It establishes that Donald Trump is above the law. The supreme court put him above the law [by ruling that he had ‘absolute immunity’ for official acts] but now he appears to escape full accountability for what were crimes charged by a grand jury.”
Dan Goldman
Goldman rejected the argument that by re-electing Trump, the American people had acquitted him of all charges.
“I think what was very clear is that people voted for Donald Trump because they thought that he was going to improve the lives of the middle class, and perhaps in addition that he would secure the border.
“They did not vote for him to dismantle our democracy, to attack the constitution, to politicize all of our agencies, and certainly not as a referendum on his criminal cases.”
Dan Goldman
He asserted that those cases should have been played out in a “court of law … and Donald Trump should not have been able to run out the clock.”
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