Special Counsel Jack Smith asked a judge to dismiss felony charges against President-elect Donald Trump for attempting to rig the 2020 election and dropped a fight to reinstate classified document charges, effectively ending the historic federal prosecutions of Trump before he retakes office on Monday.
Smith claimed that because the Department of Justice (DOJ) has a decades-old policy of not pursuing sitting presidents, the charges must be dropped before President Trump takes office in January.
The DOJ and the nation “have never faced the circumstance here, where a federal indictment against a private citizen has been returned by a grand jury and a criminal prosecution is already underway when the defendant is elected President,” the special counsel wrote in his request to a D.C. court on Monday to drop the election subversion charges.
Smith’s request was granted by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday afternoon, and the case was dismissed without prejudice.
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On Monday, Smith’s team ceased its appeal of the Florida federal judge’s decision to dismiss the charges against Trump for withholding classified documents earlier this year. However, Smith stated that he is still appealing the dismissal with regard to two other defendants.
Smith hinted that the cases might conclude a few weeks sooner: Smith asked Chutkan to halt all deadlines on Nov. 8, three days after Trump was elected the next president. Smith promised to send a status update on Dec. 2 regarding his plans.
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The government needed “time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy,” Smith said in a similar request to halt his appeal of the dismissal of Trump’s criminal case in Florida over withholding White House documents on November 13.
Trump reacted to the cases being dismissed on Truth Social, claiming that they were “empty and lawless, and should never have been brought,” along with the other cases he has faced in Georgia and New York. “That such a thing could have happened was a political hijacking and a low point in our country’s history, but I persisted, against all odds, and WON,” he added.
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