Special Counsel Jack Smith asked Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss the federal election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump on Monday.
Trump was indicted on four charges – conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights – last August. Trump is set to be sworn in as commander-in-chief come January, and Department of Justice guidelines forbid the agency from prosecuting sitting presidents.
CNN’s Paula Reid broke down the news on air, affirming that Smith is moving “to dismiss one of the two [federal] criminal cases against President-elect Trump.”
She continued:
Here he is referring to the election subversion case that he filed against President-elect Trump roughly two years ago. He is saying that, quote, “The country has never faced the circumstances here” where you have a pending criminal case against a president-elect. There is internal Justice Department guidance that says you cannot indict or prosecute a sitting president.” And here, Jack Smith saying that, quote, “This also applies” to this situation, where you have a president-elect. So he is moving to dismiss the election subversion case against Trump.
Now, of course Trump is facing two federal cases, both brought by the special counsel, Jack Smith, this election subversion case, and then also the classified documents case down in Mar-a-Lago. Now, we have reported that the Justice Department and the special counsel’s office have been in conversations about exactly how they want to wind down these cases. Now, we have not heard specifically about the Mar-a-Lago documents case yet. That is a little more complicated in terms of winding down because, of course, Trump has two co-defendants there who are not presidents-elect. So we’ll be watching to see what the special counsel does here. But in terms of the special counsel’s case against Trump related to January 6th and his alleged efforts to interfere with the outcome of the 2020 election, here Jack Smith asking to dismiss this case.
Now, this is not a big surprise. A short time ago, a couple weeks ago, Smith has asked the court for more time to, quote, “assess the unprecedented circumstances of having a pending case against a president-elect.” And they asked the court for more time to assess what they should do. And again, not a huge surprise that they were going to ask to dismiss this case, because the president-elect has made it clear once he’s in office, he intends to fire Smith and get rid of his entire office. It’s also expected he would get rid of the two cases against him. He can do that as president. He can have his attorney general fire the special counsel, dismiss cases. But here it looks like Jack Smith trying to beat him to it and asking for this case to be dismissed. And we’re watching and waiting to see if we get a similar filing related to that other federal case pending against the president-elect down in Florida related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Steven Cheung, who is set to serve as Trump’s White House communications director said in a statement that “Today’s decision by the DOJ ends the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump, and is a major victory for the rule of law.”
Watch above via CNN.
