Special counsel Jack Smith said Wednesday that he is appealing a judge’s decision to throw out the indictment against Donald Trump concerning his handling of classified documents. The special counsel team filed a notice of appeal, the initial procedural mechanism that sets the appeal in motion, on Wednesday, just two days after US District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the prosecution and well ahead of the 30-day deadline the prosecutors faced for bringing the appeal. Aileen Cannon’s nuking of the Trump documents case continues her trend of embracing long-shot legal theories This means the shock ruling would be reviewed by judges from the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals based in Atlanta. The two-page filing from Smith’s team did not indicate whether the prosecutors will seek to speed up the process.
Although the appellate court is conservatively skewed—half of its full-time judges were personally appointed by Trump—some of its decisions have defied the court’s ideological bias. For example, earlier in the Trump documents investigation, a panel of three judges, all of whom were Republican appointees, unanimously overruled Cannon’s decision to name a “special master” to examine the materials that the FBI seized during their raid of Mar-a-Lago in the summer of 2022. In another noteworthy decision, the appeals court last year unanimously rejected former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ attempt to transfer his criminal case involving Georgia election subversion to federal court. The decision was authored by a conservative judge who was appointed by former President Georg
In her decision on Monday, Cannon declared that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unlawful, which called for the case against Trump to be dropped. Cannon’s dismissing decision put a stop to the criminal procedures that had been dragging on in her Fort Pierce, Florida, courtroom since the accusations were lodged last summer. Another court will consider the legitimacy of special counsels.
The former president was accused of obstructing the FBI investigation into the papers on eight separate counts in addition to 32 counts of illegally keeping national security secrets. Smith also accused two Trump staff members of helping with the obstruction plot: Walt Nauta, Trump’s personal valet, and Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago.
The former president was the target of four criminal proceedings last year, including this one. The documents case was viewed as more straightforward than the other cases because it was based on a legal theory that was somewhat novel and targeted Trump’s actions during the 2016 and 2020 elections. This is because the documents case was similar to cases that the Justice Department regularly brings against current and former government officials who mishandle sensitive documents.
However, Cannon’s handling of the case presented numerous challenges for the prosecution, which culminated in her stunning decision on Monday nullifying Smith’s appointment. Her choice conflicted with decisions made by justices around the nation who upheld defenses of the legitimacy of special counsel appointments.
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