Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was the target of a bitter lash-out by President Joe Biden, when it emerged that the President believes that his judicial reasoning gave Federal Court Judge Aileen Cannon a pretext to dismiss the federal prosecution of former President Donald Trump on the charges of mishandling classified documents.
The dismissal was handed down on Monday, July 15. The appointment of special council Jack Smith, who has been acting on behalf of the DOJ (US Department of Justice), was ruled as “unlawful.”
In an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News, President Biden said that he was unsurprised. He believed that the dismissal was based on the Presidential immunity decision handed down by the court in late June. He pointed to the “dissent” written by Thomas which argued that special prosecutors appointed by the attorney general aren’t legitimate under federal law. This reasoning provided the basis for Judge Cannon’s ruling in favor of dismissal.
Justice Thomas, voting as he did with the court’s majority, did not write a dissenting opinion in the case. Instead, he wrote a concurring opinion, which contains the reasoning to which Biden refers.
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith had charged former President Donald Trump with illegal storage of classified documents at the Trump-owned resort Mar-a-Lago in southern Florida, where the former President now legally resides. Smith also charged Trump with crimes related to resisting Federal efforts to retrieve the files.
The defense entered a plea of not guilty on all counts, maintaining the former President’s innocence and mounting an affirmative defense that the prosecution was targeting the former President in order to accomplish a political end.
In Monday’s ruling, Judge Cannon found that Smith, having been appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland was not properly appointed to the office of Special Counsel, as the Attorney General does not have the authority to undertake such an action, did not have the authority to try the case.
