'Momentous, unsettled questions': Analyst warns end of Trump court cases leaves turmoil

On Election Night, Donald Trump became the first presidential candidate in United States history to win an election despite having faced four criminal indictments — one of which resulted in him being convicted on 34 felony counts.

Two of the criminal indictments against Trump were federal ones brought by special counsel Jack Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice: the election interference case and the classified documents case.

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On Monday, Smith moved to dismiss his election interference case against Trump, citing longstanding DOJ policy against prosecuting a sitting president. And he moved to withdraw his appeal of earlier dismissal of the classified documents case by Judge Aileen Cannon.

The New York Times' Charlie Savage, in an article published Monday, emphasizes that with Smith's two federal cases against Trump meeting their demise, the president-elect "appears set to escape any criminal accountability for his actions."

"The end of the two federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday left momentous, unsettled questions about constraints on criminal wrongdoing by presidents, from the scope of presidential immunity to whether the Justice Department may continue to appoint outside special counsels to investigate high-level wrongdoing," Savage wrote.

"Both cases against Mr. Trump — for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his later hoarding of classified government documents and obstruction of efforts to retrieve them — were short-circuited by the fact that he won the 2024 election before they could be definitively resolved."

Savage notes that with Smith having "asked courts on Monday to shut down" his two cases, there will be "implications for the future of American democracy beyond whatever constraints Mr. Trump will — or will not — feel over the course of his second term."

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"The other major question that now appears likely to end without a definitive answer is whether attorneys general, when seeking to avoid conflicts of interest in politically sensitive investigations, have the authority to bring in an outsider — rather than an existing U.S. attorney — to lead an inquiry as a special counsel with a degree of day-to-day autonomy," the Times reporter explains.

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Read Charlie Savage's full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).