admin
Washington — In the wake of the tragic assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, special counsel Jack Smith filed petitions on Monday to withdraw all federal charges against President-elect Donald Trump for his improper handling of confidential materials and his attempt to rig the 2020 presidential election.
The lawsuit alleging that Trump illegally planned to reverse his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden was officially ended hours later when U.S.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan approved Smith’s petition to dismiss the indictment pertaining to January 6.
In June 2023, Trump was first charged with 37 felonies in a Miami federal court for improperly handling confidential materials he brought from the White House to his residence in Florida.
These included conspiring to impede justice, providing false statements, and willfully keeping national defense information.
Smith’s office had filed an appeal after the lawsuit was rejected by a Florida court. In August 2023, Trump was charged individually with four crimes related to his effort to overturn.
The results of the 2020 election: conspiracy against rights, conspiracy to impede an official process, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of and attempt to hinder an official proceeding.
Trump’s attorneys subsequently claimed that the lawsuit should be dismissed for a number of reasons, including the fact that a former president cannot be punished for his activities while in office, and the case was put on pause for months.
According to Trump, the prosecutions were carried out for political reasons. He entered not guilty pleas in both federal prosecutions and has never publicly acknowledged that his election claims were untrue.
The federal charges of Trump were the first time in American history that a president was accused of unlawfully attempting to hold onto power, mishandling secret information, and attempting to thwart a government probe.
Additionally, their dismissal is a historic event. Half of American voters voted for Trump to win the president again, fifty years after both party leaders forced Richard Nixon to resign due to accusations of criminal behavior while in office.
Because of his election win, Trump will be subject to the Justice Department’s long-standing stance that a sitting president cannot be charged with a felony after he becomes office on January 20.
“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind,” Smith’s office stated in its submission on Monday.
Regarding the merits of the defendant’s prosecution, the government’s stance remains unchanged. However, the situation has changed,” the special counsel said.
Congress has the authority to remove a president from office if they commit crimes, according to the DOJ policy that was implemented following the Watergate affair.
It is intended to free current presidents from the burden of court challenges so they can carry out their responsibilities.
During his first term in office, Trump was able to dodge charges related to Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation because to the identical legal stance taken by DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Since Mueller’s team was unable to prosecute a sitting president, they were unable to come to a definitive decision about whether they thought Trump had committed a crime.
In 2019, Mueller said that charging Trump was “not an option we could consider.” Smith’s case is now being blocked by the same OLC ruling.
Smith’s team claimed that the special counsel’s office was torn between “two fundamental and compelling national interests” after Trump was re-elected.
The nation’s dedication to the rule of law and the enduring belief that “[n]o man in this country is so high that he is above the law” counterbalance the Constitution’s mandate that the president not be overburdened in carrying out his significant duties.
According to a source who spoke to NBC News earlier this month, Smith and his staff want to step down before Trump takes office.
Before he resigns, Smith must submit a report to the attorney general outlining his charging judgments in accordance with special counsel procedures.
Conservative judges’ crucial assistance
When the Supreme Court ruled on presidential immunity, conservative justices gave Trump a decisive win. In the beginning, the justices delayed months to reach a ruling, which prevented Chutkan, the federal judge in charge of the case in Washington, from holding a trial before to the election.
They found that all of a president’s communications with the attorney general were “absolutely immune” from prosecution, and in a July opinion, they granted the president broad additional protection from prosecution.
Liberal justices said in a minority opinion that the decision granted presidents the authority to direct federal criminal probes of their opponents without facing repercussions.
Aileen Cannon, the federal judge Trump selected to preside over the case involving sensitive data, dismissed all of the allegations against Trump two weeks later, accusing him of mishandling confidential documents and trying to thwart the inquiry.
Cannon determined that Smith had not been duly constituted as a special counsel, a ruling that was widely criticized by legal experts and that Smith pledged to pursue.
Decades of earlier decisions by both conservative and liberal judges were overturned by the unexpected decision.
A fresh federal grand jury indicted Trump on the same four allegations in the election case in August, claiming that.
Trump “knew that they were false” and that his false statements of widespread voting fraud in the 2020 election were “unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing.” Smith was unable to pursue such claims, however, once Trump was re-elected.
“Today’s decision by the DOJ ends the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump, and is a major victory for the rule of law,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement.
President Trump and the American people are eager to bring our nation together and demand that the political weaponization of our legal system halt immediately.
Judges have been informed by several Jan. 6 defendants that they regret being “gullible” enough to believe Trump’s lies, which were repeated by the president-elect’s supporters, Republicans in Congress, and conservative social media influencers.
Before Trump takes office again, the Justice Department is working to apprehend the “most egregious” protesters.
The president-elect has said that he would pardon an unspecified percentage of the rioters who took place on January 6. He has referred to them as “warriors,” “unbelievable patriots,” “hostages,” and political prisoners.