Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday asked Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was allotted former President Trump's Jan. 6 election-interference case, to decline Trump’s latest bid to toss the case, through a filing arguing that Smith was unlawfully appointed. It’s the second time Trump’s team has made such an argument, and it was initially successful in his Florida classified documents case before Judge Aileen Cannon, though Smith has appealed that ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Hill reports. The 11th Circuit has reversed some of Cannon’s earlier rulings, including one appointing a special master to review the evidence collected by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump argues that Smith was not lawfully appointed because he has not been confirmed by the Senate. Prosecutors say that argument flies in the face of more than five decades of practice regarding special counsel appointments, including a Supreme Court case regarding the special counsel investigating former President Nixon. But prosecutors contend, as they did in Florida, that Smith’s appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland followed the lawful process for tapping a special prosecutor. Also, Chutkan has expressed skepticism about Cannon’s ruling, something prosecutors noted in their Thursday filing. “As this Court observed at the status hearing on September 5, 2024, the defendant is relying on ‘dicta in a concurrence written by Justice Thomas’ and ‘an opinion filed by another district judge in another circuit which frankly this Court doesn’t find particularly persuasive’ in the face of ‘binding D.C. Circuit precedent on this issue,’” they wrote.
Comments