Legal experts hope latest Cannon ruling means a new Trump docs case with a new judge
Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Donald Trump's documents case on Monday morning ahead of the Republican convention, declaring that special counsel Jack Smith was not constitutionally appointed.
Legal analysts were quick to explain that no judge had ever done what Cannon had done and that the case had been litigated extensively, with considerable case law from Richard Nixon to, most recently, Hunter Biden's special counsel.
National security lawyer Bradley Moss, for one, fears that the case could go all the way to the Supreme Court, and they could rewrite the decades of precedent.
Former senior Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann also made note of the Supreme Court connection and lamented that the Cannon decision was "so predictable, after the Justice [Clarence] Thomas concurrence."
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Thomas was the lone dissenter who went further in the immunity case than other justices, saying that the documents case should be dismissed because of Smith's appointment.
“If there is no law establishing the office that the special counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution,” Thomas said. “A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former president.”
Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, suggested, "This argument is unlikely to get five votes in the Supreme Court. But the delay will push any resolution of this case well past this year’s presidential election."
MSNBC legal analyst Adam Klasfeld explained that Cannon "noticed" Thomas' ruling, it appears.
"Justice Thomas all but invited Judge Cannon to find Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed as special counsel," he wrote. "Her ruling, doing so, cites that concurrence at least three times."
"To me, the only question is whether the Special Counsel also asks for the case to be reassigned on remand," said law school professor Steve Vladeck.
"Wow. She just (temporarily) immunized Trump from engaging in espionage," explained Andrew C. Laufer, a New York civil rights attorney. "I guess this is the price for a SCOTUS seat. If there's any doubt over what is at stake this November, doubt no more."
Law school professor Anthony Michal Kreis suggested, "If I'm Jack Smith and the DOJ, I might consider handing the Mar-A-Lago case to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, re-indict, and hope it gets assigned to a more competent judge than Cannon."
"Maybe the DOJ makes Smith an AUSA and says, 'have at it,'" he continued. "Might be quicker and long-term strategically sound. I'm not sure how feasible it is, but I can't see the downsides of trying to work around Judge Cannon than taking up an appeal on an order that is jurisprudential garbage."