By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-11-25 18:46:57 | Updated at 2024-11-25 21:48:37
3 hours ago
Special counsel Jack Smith has moved to have the federal election subversion charges against Donald Trump dropped.
The president-elect was facing four charges in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election that led to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to dismiss the case without prejudice because of policy prohibiting prosecuting a sitting president.
The case has been seen is likely to fall away since Trump’s stunning win in the November elections.
A grand jury indicted Trump August 1 last year in the case, but it stalled for months while the Supreme Court considered ‘immunity’ arguments raised by Trump’s lawyers.
The court eventually ruled in a 6-3 decision by its conservative majority that Trump did enjoy broad immunity from prosecution for official acts as president. That prompted Smith, who Trump regularly calls ‘deranged’ and has vowed to fire, to file a superseding indictment that narrowed the charges.
Trump was facing charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction and attempted obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
Incoming White House communications director Steven Cheung called the move a 'major victory for the rule of law.'
It comes days after a New York judge moved to dismiss Trump's hush money case following his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. An existing Justice Department policy disallows prosecution of a sitting president.
It ends a lengthy investigation that cost taxpayers $50 million and never made it to trial, in a case that prosecutors didn't charge until halfway through President Joe Biden's term.
Special counsel Jack Smith has moved to have the federal election subversion charges against Donald Trump dropped
The start of Biden's term featured prosecutions of hundreds of people who enterted the Capitol on January 6, when Trump supporters stormed the building on the day Congress met to count electoral votes certified by the states.
Then in another historic decision, AG Merrick Garland announced that he had apointed Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor, to probe 'whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021.'
Smith also oversaw the classified documents case against Trump, who was accused of taking national security documents to Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House.
Smith has already made it known that he plans to leave before Trump takes office.
