Jack Smith urges appeals court to revive Trump’s Mar-a-Lago case after Judge Cannon’s ‘nonsensical’ ruling

Special counsel Jack Smith is urging a federal appeals court to revive the classified documents case against Donald Trump, after a Trump-appointed judge dismissed the charges in a shock ruling that argued Smith’s office was unlawfully created.

Monday’s filing with a Florida appeals court cites several longstanding precedents and Supreme Court rulings that appear to contradict District Judge Aileen Cannon’s conclusion, which Smith’s team calls “nonsensical.”

Prosecutors also warned that Judge Cannon’s rationale would jeopardize “hundreds” of similarly appointed offices.

“The district court’s contrary view 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,” Smith’s team argued. “This Court should reverse.”

Last month, Cannon argued that the “prosecution of this action breaches two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme — the role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers and the role of Congress in authorizing expenditures by law.”

Legal experts and prosecutors considered the theory far-fetched, and it wasn’t adopted in court until right-wing legal groups began promoting it. Trump’s lawyers did not make the same argument to try to dismiss the federal election interference case, despite the fact that Smith is also prosecuting that case exactly the same way.

Cannon’s ruling “deviated from binding Supreme Court precedent, misconstrued the statutes that authorized the special counsel’s appointment, and took inadequate account of the longstanding history of Attorney General appointments