Justice Department Dropping Its Classified Documents Case Against Trump

Special counsel Jack Smith moved to drop the Justice Department’s appeal in President-elect Donald Trump’s classified documents case.

The move, announced in a court filing Monday, aligns with the longstanding DOJ policy of not criminally prosecuting sitting presidents.

The decision comes shortly after Smith also filed a motion to dismiss the 2020 election interference case against Trump. Last week, the judge overseeing Trump’s hush money trial canceled the upcoming sentencing hearing without immediately setting a new date.

Smith did not move to drop proceedings against the two other men charged in the case: Walt Nauta, Trump’s personal aide and valet, and Carlos De Oliveira, the maintenance chief at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.

Special Counsel Jack Smith speaks to the press at the Department of Justice in in June 2023.
Special Counsel Jack Smith speaks to the press at the Department of Justice in in June 2023. MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images

Trump celebrated the dismissal of proceedings against him. “These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought,” he claimed on Truth Social.

In a shock ruling in July, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the classified documents case after it dragged out far longer than legal experts expected. Smith quickly filed an appeal challenging Cannon’s ruling that his appointment to the case was unconstitutional because it did not go through Congress.

Ahead of the election, Cannon’s name appeared on the Trump campaign’s list of possible candidates for attorney general, according to documents obtained by ABC News.

The classified documents case concerned 13,000 government documents, including hundreds of highly classified ones, that the FBI recovered during a 2022 raid at Mar-a-Lago. The documents, many of which detailed matters of national security, were found strewn about Trump’s home ― in a ballroom, a bathroom, an office, his bedroom and a storage room.

This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records stored in a bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records stored in a bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. via Associated Press

He was charged with 40 felony counts, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Only one of the four criminal indictments against Trump is still technically proceeding: the Georgia racketeering case against him that arose from his efforts to overturn that state’s 2020 presidential election results. The case was already stalled by several pretrial motions from Trump’s legal team, and it remains to be seen whether a state-level prosecutor can take action against a sitting president.

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