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Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday requested more time to consider how former President Donald Trump's January 6 case can move forward, after the Supreme Court gave Trump a major victory last month. The Supreme Court ruled that presidents and former presidents are exempt from prosecution when it comes to core presidential actions, and presumptive immunity for other official acts. But the Supreme Court sent the January 6 case back to the lower courts to determine what actions constitute "official" acts. U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan has ordered both sides of the January 6 case to jointly propose how...

Jack Smith’s January 6 case against President Trump is now back with Judge Tanya Chutkan following the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. The Supreme Court last month ruled 6-3 that Trump has absolute immunity for his core Constitutional powers. Former presidents are entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for their official acts, according to the Supreme Court. The case was sent back to the DC Appellate Court after the Supreme Court issued a ruling on presidential immunity. Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a highly unusual Saturday order and set a hearing for August 16. DC Obama Judge Tanya Chutkan,...

Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 @julie_kelly2 As expected, Judge Chutkan wastes no time in restarting the proceedings in Jack Smith’s J6 case against Donald Trump. She filed this order this morning. Status hearing set for August 16 with status report due this week. Here we go again…

After nearly eight months in limbo, former President Donald J. Trump’s federal election interference case sprang back to life on Saturday as the judge overseeing it scheduled a hearing in Washington for Aug. 16 to discuss next steps.At the hearing, the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, will discuss with Mr. Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, how each side would like to proceed with a complicated fact-finding mission the Supreme Court ordered last month. The order was part of its landmark ruling granting Mr. Trump broad immunity against criminal prosecution for acts arising from...

VIDEOMerrick Garland claims he wouldn't ILLEGALLY appoint Jack Smith to go after President Trump. Why? Because he claims he is too smart for that. That was his excuse. More likely what happened was that he knew the appointment of Jack Smith was ILLEGAL but hoped that the rest of us wouldn't be smart enough to notice.

The federal government’s classified documents indictment was once considered a “slam dunk.” But this month, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida dismissed the case, ruling that the attorney general improperly appointed Jack Smith, and therefore Smith could not legally prosecute Trump. Smith promptly notified Cannon that he intends to appeal her decision, but it’s not clear what his strategy will be. There is now a near-zero chance that Donald Trump will be tried over this case in front of a jury before November—but special counsel Jack Smith is forging ahead with an appeal that could go...

A federal appeals court has hampered the latest attempt by special counsel Jack Smith to save his classified documents case against former President Donald Trump that was dismissed earlier this month by U.S. Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon. Politico reported that Smith’s bid to revive the case is on life support after the 11th Circuit Appeals Court announced it would give both sides until mid-October to submit briefs for a case that is now certain to remain unresolved before the November election. The announcement comes less than a month after Judge Cannon ruled that federal law is ambiguous about whether...

Former Attorney General Bill Barr did not improperly pressure prosecutors to reduce sentencing recommendations for political activist Roger Stone, according to a new government watchdog report. The exoneration of Barr came more than four years after a deluge of media reports alleging wrongdoing. However, J.P. Cooney, a Justice Department official now serving as Special Counsel Jack Smith’s top deputy, cultivated a politically toxic environment, disseminated baseless conspiracy theories about Trump and his political appointees, and engaged in unprofessional conduct as he oversaw the team making sentencing recommendations, according to the same report. Cooney is mentioned (as the “Fraud and Public...

Former President Donald Trump is threatening to file suit against Special Counsel Jack Smith over the August 2022 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to lead an independent investigation into Trump's post-presidency handling of classified documents and his actions leading up to the January 6 attack U.S. Capitol attack in November 2022, three months after the former president's South Florida home was searched in relation to the documents case. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump and has frequently been accused of bias in his favor, dismissed the documents case last week while...

...but I was wrong. I was dead wrong on that. So, much has changed, right? I think a lot of us assume that the trials would have some impact. It didn't. The trials of Donald Trump have been so mishandled by the Democrats, both in terms of communication, the reality, you know, of each of the trials, Jack Smith screwing the Mar-a-Lago trial up, the Fani Willis and all the shenanigans going on in Georgia, all the issues that happened with, you know, Trump's trial, it's not hurting his poll numbers at all because the Democrats and -- is --...

Special counsel Jack Smith has formally appealed a federal judge’s dismissal of criminal charges against former President Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified information after finding the prosecutor was unlawfully appointed. Smith’s office filed a notice saying it would appeal Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling tossing out the 40 charges Trump faced to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Trump-appointed judge on Monday ruled that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not have the authority to appoint a federal officer with the “kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith.” “The bottom line is this: The...

Following the dismissal of Jack Smith‘s classified documents case against former president Donald Trump, the Hollywood left has descended into a collective meltdown. The big win for Trump came after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon handed down her decision on Monday. Cannon said in her 93-page decision that Smith’s appointment was “unlawful” and unconditional. “The clerk is directed to close this case,” she wrote. NBC News reported: She issued the decision on the first day of the Republican National Convention, two days after an assassination attempt against Trump. Trump praised the ruling in a statement that referred to Saturday’s shooting...

“This is how republics collapse.” Those ominous words captured the hand-wringing, hair-pulling reaction to the dismissal of the Florida case against Donald Trump by Judge Aileen Cannon. It was not just that she reached a conclusion long supported by some conservative lawyers and a Supreme Court justice. To rule in favor of Trump in such a dismissal is, once again, the end to Democracy as we know it. The 93-page order methodically goes through the governing cases and statutes for the appointment of prosecutors. There has long been a debate over how an attorney general like Merrick Garland can circumvent...

Former President Trump on Monday received one of his biggest wins yet in fighting his criminal charges when a judge tossed his classified documents indictment. By ruling that special counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision sets aside Trump’s 40 criminal charges that accuse him of mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them from Mar-a-Lago. Here are five takeaways from Trump’s major win: First of Trump’s indictments dismissed Decision latches onto Thomas’s concurrence Jack Smith plans to appeal Ruling comes at start of GOP convention Ruling divides Democrats, GOP

Judge Aileen Cannon's dismissal of Donald Trump's classified documents case may backfire on the former president, according to a slew of legal experts, potentially landing the presumptive Republican nominee in another court where he'd be less likely to win on the merits. In her decision Monday, Cannon opined that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith by the Department of Justice violated the Constitution. But she had long frustrated prosecutors and legal observers before this week for repeatedly delaying the trial and appearing partial towards Trump's team, culminating now in a ruling that one expert called "jurisprudential garbage." The decision,...

Jack Smith should be writing a thank you note to U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon right about now. By dismissing the so-called classified documents case against Donald Trump and his two co-defendants, Cannon just spared the special counsel and his team months of continued humiliation in her Florida courtroom and, eventually, in front of the nation. In a 93-page order issued on Monday, Cannon, in her typically cautious and detailed manner, explained why Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution; Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 to take over the Department of Justice’s existing investigations into Trump’s...

On July 1, 2024 the Supreme Court ruled U.S. presidents have immunity for official acts with President Donald Trump at the center of the case. In his concurrence in the majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas made the argument that Special Counsel appointments could broadly be unconstitutional, but especially if they are not appointed by Congress. "It is difficult to see how the Special Counsel has an office 'established by Law,' as required by the Constitution. When the Attorney General appointed the Special Counsel, he did not identify any statute that clearly creates such an office," Clarence wrote. "None of the...

A federal judge in Florida threw out the prosecution of former President Donald Trump on Monday in the “documents” case because she ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith had not been appointed in a constitutional or lawful manner. Judge Aileen Cannon granted a defense motion after ruling that Smith, who was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate as other U.S. Attorneys have been in the past, could not lawfully bring the indictment against Trump in federal court. “In the end, it seems the Executive’s growing comfort in appointing ‘regulatory’ special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad...

Jack Smith—who has nothing but a humiliating losing streak before SCOTUS—takes pot shots at Clarence Thomas for his concurring opinion in immunity decision that raised the unconstitutionality of Smith’s appointment. This is in response to Judge Cannon asking for additional briefing on immunity decision related to documents case in FLA. She is contemplating both a motion to dismiss on presidential immunity grounds (filed months ago) AND a motion to dismiss based on Smith’s unlawful appointment—which was the subject of a hearing last month. Of course Thomas’ opinion is relevant in this case but leave it to unaccountable, unelected, not Congress-approved...

Judge dismisses classified documents indictment against Donald Trump. The federal judge overseeing the classified documents charges against former president Donald Trump has dismissed the indictment on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed, according to a new court filing Monday. U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ruling is a remarkable win for Trump, whose lawyers have thrown longshot argument after longshot argument to dismiss the case. Other courts have rejected similar arguments to the one that he made in Florida about Smith’s unlawful appointment.