UPDATE (Nov. 25, 2024, 4:45 p.m. ET): U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted special counsel Jack Smith’s motion to dismiss the federal election interference case against Donald Trump.
Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss the federal election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump.
Once Trump won the presidential election, that meant that his two federal criminal cases (this one and the classified documents case) would eventually go away, whether by lawyers in the current Justice Department or the next one moving to dismiss, or Trump potentially attempting to pardon himself. The DOJ also has a policy against charging and prosecuting sitting presidents. Smith already was reportedly planning on resigning before Trump, who vowed to fire Smith, took office.
Smith’s motion cited that DOJ policy and said that the prosecution “must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.” But the special counsel added that the decision to ask to dismiss the case “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.”
Trump’s election victory “sets at odds two fundamental and compelling national interests,” Smith’s motion stated, “on the one hand, the Constitution’s requirement that the President must not be unduly encumbered in fulfilling his weighty responsibilities … and on the other hand, the Nation’s commitment to the rule of law and the longstanding principle that ‘[n]o man in this country is so high that he is above the law.’”
In a statement Monday, Trump transition spokesman Steve Cheung said Smith’s motion to end the case “is a major victory for the rule of law. The American People and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.”
Both of Trump’s federal cases were paused while the courts awaited word from Smith about how he wanted to proceed in the cases because of Trump’s election. Before that, the federal election interference case was back in the trial court with Chutkan, who was tasked with figuring out how to proceed with the case after the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling curtailed Smith’s charges.
Minutes after moving to dismiss the federal election interference case, Smith dropped his appeal against Trump in the classified documents case. The special counsel had been appealing U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the case on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed. Unlike the election interference case, Trump has two co-defendants in the classified documents case, which raises additional issues to consider on top of the fact that it is in an appellate court as opposed to the trial court. In his motion in the Florida case Monday, Smith said, the appeal “concerning the other two defendants will continue because, unlike defendant Trump, no principle of temporary immunity applies to them.” Trump also has two state criminal cases (in New York and Georgia) whose fate is less clear, because presidents don’t have the same power to make them go away. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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