The Mar-a-Lago papers case is not over. Special prosecutor Jack Smith has decided to appeal the judge’s decision to close the case against former President Donald Trump over confidential documents he took to his Palm Beach mansion in Florida and kept there after leaving office. Smith announced this in a document filed Wednesday with the Florida court in charge of the case. It will now be up to a higher federal court to decide. Ultimately, the decision could go all the way to the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has favored Trump in several of its decisions.
“The United States of America hereby gives notice that it is appealing to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit the order of the District Court issued on July 15, 2024, Docket 672,” the document says briefly. The content of the appeal with the legal arguments to ask the court to reverse the decision of federal judge Aileen Cannon, appointed by Donald Trump himself, is not available for now. The higher courts have rejected previous decisions by the judge, who has almost always ruled in favor of the former president and has been delaying the case indefinitely until it is concluded.
In a stunning 93-page ruling, the judge found that the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, violated the Constitution because he had been appointed not by the president (but by the attorney general) and not confirmed by the Senate. The prosecutors had disputed the claim that the appointment was defective during court hearings last month. The decision breaks with all previous precedents on the matter, which have upheld the validity of Justice Department appointments of special counsels bypassing the Senate. Moreover, prosecutors argued that even if the judge ruled in Trump’s favor regarding the formal defect in the appointment, the appropriate response would not be to throw out the entire proceeding, which she did.
“The framers of the Constitution gave Congress a fundamental role in the appointment of principal and subordinate officials. That role cannot be usurped by the Executive Branch or blurred elsewhere, whether in this case or another, whether in times of greater national need or not,” the judge’s ruling said.
The Mar-a-Lago classified papers case erupted with the search of Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, mansion by FBI agents on August 8, 2022. In June of the following year, he was formally charged with dozens of crimes: conspiracy, obstruction of justice, willful retention of national security documents, falsifications, and violations of the espionage law. The papers, like those of any American president when he leaves office, belong by law to the National Archives, but in addition, since they contain information sensitive to the defense, their retention may constitute a crime. Trump is also accused of refusing to return them when the authorities repeatedly asked him to do so. This resistance led to the aforementioned search.
At the start of the case, the same judge ordered the Justice Department and the FBI to stop their investigations into all documents found in the search of the Mar-a-Lago mansion while a special expert reviewed them. The appeals court unblocked the investigation in a decision that was a legal setback for both the judge and Trump’s lawyers. Since then, Cannon has sided with the former president in more decisions. The delays accumulated by the case will foreseeably prevent it from going to trial before the November 5 elections.
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Even if the justices find that the judge’s decision to dismiss the case is unlawful and overturn the dismissal of the case, Trump could still get the charge dropped if he is re-elected president. Trump has been formally nominated as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee at this week’s convention in Milwaukee.
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