Trump cleared of federal indictments before he takes office

Former U.S. President Donald Trump and special counsel Jack Smith are seen in a combination of file photos in Washington, in 2023.[VOA]

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will no longer be under federal indictment when he is inaugurated as the country’s 47th president on January 20.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington quickly dismissed charges Monday that Trump illegally tried to upend his 2020 reelection loss. She did so after U.S. special counsel Jack Smith acknowledged in a court filing that long-standing Justice Department policy precluded prosecution of a sitting president.

In another court filing, Smith also asked an appellate court in Atlanta to remove Trump from a pending appeal. The prosecutor had originally filed the appeal seeking to reinstate dismissed charges that Trump hoarded hundreds of classified national security documents at his oceanside estate in Florida when he left the presidency in 2021.

The prosecutor said he stood behind the merits of both indictments against Trump, even as he said the charges should be dropped.

Trump, on the Truth Social media platform, declared, "These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought."

He said that more than $100 million in taxpayer money "has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME. It was a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON."

During his campaign, Trump vowed that if he was elected for a second nonconsecutive term, he would fire Smith "within two seconds" of assuming the presidency again. But U.S. news accounts say Smith plans to leave the Justice Department ahead of Trump's taking office.

In the Washington case, Trump, a Republican, was accused of pressuring state officials after the 2020 election to change election results that showed Democrat Joe Biden had defeated him and of spreading lies that Biden won only because of massive vote fraud and election irregularities.

The prosecutor asked Chutkan to dismiss the case "without prejudice," leaving open the possibility that the charges could be renewed after Trump leaves office a second time in January 2029.

As Smith’s lengthy investigations have wound on without the cases going to trial, some U.S. legal analysts have said Trump, when he assumes office again, could try to pardon himself to end his legal jeopardy with certainty, an action no president has ever tried before.

In Atlanta, Smith asked a federal appellate court to drop Trump as a co-defendant from the special counsel’s appeal of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, had dismissed the classified documents case on the ground that Smith had been illegally appointed as special counsel.

The decision by Cannon broke with legal precedent, which sanctioned the appointment of special counsels, to agree with Trump’s lawyers that Smith was unlawfully appointed.

Trump was accused in the case overseen by Cannon of hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his home and private club alongside the Atlantic coastline in Florida.

Trump and co-defendants Carlos De Oliveira and Waltine (Walt) Nauta were accused of trying to obstruct government efforts to retrieve the documents, which U.S. law mandated be turned over to the National Archives as Trump left office in January 2021.

Smith asked the appeals court to remove Trump from the case but to leave his co-defendants in the case, which could allow the appeal of Cannon’s dismissal to continue after Trump assumes power again.

In his filing in Washington, Smith said the Justice Department’s prohibition on taking sitting presidents to trial "is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind."

The cases being heard by Chutkan in Washington and Cannon in Florida had dragged on for months, with Trump’s lawyers filing numerous legal challenges to the charges.

Trump eventually won a broad ruling from the Supreme Court earlier this year, saying that Trump and all former presidents were immune from prosecution for any official actions they had taken while president but not for unofficial acts.

Until Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 election and foreclosed Smith’s prosecution of the 2020 election interference indictment, the prosecutor was recasting his election interference case against Trump to account for the restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court.

In a statement after Smith’s two court filings, Trump’s running mate in the election, Vice President-elect JD Vance, cited Trump’s legal peril as he ran for a new four-year term in the White House.

"If Donald J. Trump had lost an election, he may very well have spent the rest of his life in prison," Vance said on social media, adding, "It’s time to ensure what happened to President Trump never happens in this country again."