Donald Trump has just scored another huge legal victory. A federal judge on Monday dismissed the case against him that he illegally kept classified documents upon leaving the White House, reports Politico. In what the New York Times describes as a "stunning" decision, Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that special prosecutor Jack Smith was improperly appointed by Congress to investigate the trove of documents found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Smith's team said that Cannon's reasoning conflicts with previous decisions on the matter and that it will appeal the decision. The Trump victory comes on the first day of the Republican National Convention, where he will be formally anointed the party nominee days after surviving an assassination attempt.
"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," wrote Cannon, a Trump appointee, in her 93-page order, per the Washington Post. Specifically, Cannon ruled that Smith's appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, though the ruling "flew in the face of previous court decisions reaching back to the Watergate era that upheld the legality of the ways in which independent prosecutors have been named," per the Times. (More Mar-a-Lago indictment stories.)
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