{"id":87721,"date":"2024-07-16T12:04:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T02:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=87721"},"modified":"2024-07-16T12:04:02","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T02:04:02","slug":"judge-dismisses-case-against-donald-trump-for-allegedly-stealing-sensitive-government-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=87721","title":{"rendered":"Judge dismisses case against Donald Trump for allegedly stealing sensitive government documents"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A judge in the United States has sensationally dismissed the criminal case against former president Donald Trump for allegedly stealing sensitive government documents and storing them, illegally, at his Mar-a-Lago resort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Mr Trump in 2020, issued the ruling on Monday morning, local time, after a petition from the former president\u2019s legal team to have the charges against him dropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Judge Cannon said the appointment of a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee the case had violated&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/constitution.congress.gov\/browse\/essay\/artII-S2-C2-3-1\/ALDE_00013092\/\">the Appointments Clause of the US Constitution<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIs there a statute in the&nbsp;<em>United States Code<\/em>&nbsp;that authorises the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution? After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe bottom line is this: the Appointments Clause is a critical constitutional restriction stemming from the separation of powers, and it gives to Congress a considered role in determining the propriety of vesting appointment power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Judge Cannon said the government had \u201cusurped\u201d that \u201cimportant legislative authority\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/image-67-1024x576.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-87729\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/image-67-1024x576.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/image-67-300x169.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/image-67-768x432.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/image-67.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Judge Aileen Cannon. Picture: AFP<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ruling came as something of a surprise, given the same issue has been litigated in previous cases and, in those cases, the appointment of other special counsels, under the same process, was found to have been legal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is no law on America\u2019s books that establishes the role of a special counsel; instead, they are appointed by the nation\u2019s attorney-general \u2013 Mr Smith was handed the role by the current Attorney-General, Merrick Garland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mr Trump\u2019s team argued before Judge Cannon that the special counsel role should be established by law, and individual appointments should be confirmed by Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the criminal cases against Donald Trump, widely regarded as the most perilous he has faced, has been sensationally dismissed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":87106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,2811],"tags":[8933,11545,11544,11],"class_list":["post-87721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-politics","tag-donald-trump","tag-judge-aileen-cannon","tag-mar-a-lago","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87730,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87721\/revisions\/87730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}