Jack Smith's Team Appeals Dismissal of Classified Documents Case Against Trump

Special Counsel Jack Smith's team on Monday appealed last month's dismissal by a Florida district court of the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump.

The brief argued that controversial Judge Aileen Cannon had improperly dismissed the case by ignoring laws and the long-established system authorizing special counsels.

Cannon, appointed by Trump, stunned many legal experts when she ruled in July that Smith had been illegally appointed special counsel and did not have the authority to charge the former president, upending a decades-old system involving similar officials.

Monday's brief, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, argued that Cannon had mistakenly ruled that no specific federal statute authorizes the appointment of special counsels like Smith, or gives them the power that they have utilized for 25 years.

She also ruled that Smith's appointment was illegal because he had not been named by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Smith was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Prosecutors, however, pointed in the brief to four statutes that they argued give the U.S. attorney general full authority to name special counsels, which they said have been backed by courts when challenged.

"The district court's contrary view conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the attorney general has such authority" to appoint a special prosecutor, they argued.

In addition, Cannon's ruling "is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government," the filing emphasized.

Smith's team pointed in particular to the Supreme Court case United States v. Nixon, which found that the attorney general had the statutory power to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration in the early 1970s.

They warned that Cannon's refusal to recognize the validity of the manner in which Smith was appointed could "call into question hundreds of appointments throughout the executive branch." That "could jeopardize the longstanding operation of the Justice Department," they added.

Trump was charged over a year ago with illegally retaining classified documents when he left the White House, haphazardly storing them a Mar-a-Lago, then obstructing authorities' efforts to retrieve them.

The expected continuing lengthy legal battle will likely end in the U.S. Supreme Court with no conclusion before the presidential election.

There was no immediate reaction to the appeal from Trump or his campaign.