While it’s only a matter of time before Donald Trump’s federal criminal cases are gone, there’s an important distinction between the two prosecutions, which the Justice Department reportedly has been evaluating how to wind down before the president-elect takes office in January.
The federal election interference case is in the trial court, after the Supreme Court granted Trump broad criminal immunity and sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, for the Washington judge to determine how that ruling applies to the details of Trump’s case. A dismissal at this point would cut that work short and we’d never know.
But the classified documents case in Florida is currently on appeal, after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the case. The Trump appointee tossed it on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed, in a decision that prosecutors say “conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the Attorney General has such authority, and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government.”
As the DOJ’s brief illustrates, the issue pending in the documents case goes beyond Trump.
To be sure, Cannon’s ruling isn’t a binding precedent on other courts like a Supreme Court ruling would be, or like an appeals court ruling would be for the region a given court covers.
But if the case disappears before the appeals court can potentially overturn the outlier dismissal, then Trump’s presidential victory will be a win of sorts for Cannon, too — and that’s before even getting to the possibility of Trump, equipped with a GOP-controlled Senate, promoting her to higher office.
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.
