This is breaking, I”ll update.
WAPO:
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 the legality of Smith’s appointment.
…“Upon careful study of the foundational challenges raised in the Motion, the Court is convinced that Special Counsel’s Smith’s prosecution of this action breaches two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme—the role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers, and the role of Congress in authorizing expenditures by law,” Cannon concluded in her 93-page order.
Josh Kovensky gives us more detail at Talking Points Memo (story includes a link to the full ruling on Google Drive)
Cannon’s determination that Smith was unlawfully appointed effectively endorses a legal theory tested multiple times in previous cases and dismissed, rooted in the idea that the Attorney General cannot appoint and fund a special counsel absent authorization from Congress. That was seen as an absurd notion, and one contravened by decades of special counsel investigations under the current statute.
But it received a boost both after Cannon held a multi-day hearing on the question and after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas supported the idea in a concurrence in the Trump immunity ruling. Cannon cited that concurrence throughout her order.
And we continue the pattern of “The President has unlimited power, unless he’s a Democrat”
CNN:
In a ruling Monday, Cannon said the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution.
“In the end, it seems the Executive’s growing comfort in appointing ‘regulatory’ special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny,” Cannon wrote.
As @CallToActivism points out, this is grounds for Smith to appeal, and the 11th circuit is likely to be sympathetic — but then there’s SCOTUS.
Since, as Adam Klasfeld notes,
In Trump’s immunity ruling, Justice Thomas all but invited Judge Cannon to find Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed as special counsel.
Cannon noticed.
Her ruling doing so cites that concurrence at least three times.
Chris Hayes:
Just to be crystal clear: SCOTUS has upheld special counsels repeatedly. Cannon is a district court judge, her job is to apply controlling precedent. She’s doing this because she thinks the MAGA court is on the same page as her and Trump’s lawyers and will go along.
And here’s the “Unity” reaction from the orangeman himself: