Judge dismisses Donald Trump’s classified documents case

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case involving the retention of government files at his Mar-a-Lago compound has dismissed the case.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, has ruled that appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution.

“In the end, it seems the Executive’s growing comfort in appointing ‘regulatory’ special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny,” Cannon wrote in an order on Monday.

The decision follows two days of courtroom hearings over whether Smith’s appointment and funding is constitutional.

Trump faced 40 separate charges stemming from allegations that he withheld hundreds of classified documents after leaving the White House for his private Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, then conspired to obstruct government attempts to retrieve them.

Smith’s team will likely appeal the ruling.

His attorneys have filed several long-shot attempts to delay and ultimately dismiss the case, including an argument that the appointment of the special counsel and the way the office is funded unlawfully circumvents Congress, despite other investigations under prior administrations running the same way, and in precedents established by the Supreme Court.

Judge Cannon’s 93-page order does not speak to the facts of the case or evidence against Trump but focuses solely on that argument.

Trump’s allies insisted that the argument should be considered at the Supreme Court, and Justice Clarence Thomas went out of his way to file a separate opinion in the unrelated landmark ruling on presidential “immunity” to cast doubt on the constitutionality of a special counsel’s office.

In a filing earlier this year,