WASHINGTON — A year that began with the prospect of a federal court reckoning for Donald Trump will end without any chance of a trial, leaving voters without a final jury verdict in the two most consequential cases against the Republican presidential nominee.
Both cases anyway – one accuses him of illegally hoarding classified documents, the other of trying to overturn his 2020 loss – the election is still looming.
Their potential revival makes clear that at stake in the November vote is not just the presidency, but possibly Trump’s freedom as well as he faces lengthy court battles.
A look at why neither case went to trial this year:
The indictment accusing Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents included a series of sensational allegations, including that he arrogantly displayed a Pentagon “plan of attack” and repeatedly enlisted aides and lawyers to help him hide documents requested by investigators.
Prosecutors took the national security concerns for granted: The documents included nuclear capabilities and the data was scattered haphazardly throughout Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, including in his bathroom.
They also saw the evidence as compelling and clear: an audio recording showed Trump bragging about a document he said he knew was secret; surveillance footage showed boxes of records being moved from a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, and major A jury testimony from a Trump lawyer implicated Trump in a scheme to deceive the FBI.
These factors combined fueled the widespread perception that the secret documents case was the most dangerous of the four criminal cases he faced in the past year.
Hours before the indictment was unsealed, word came that the case had been assigned to Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge with limited trial experience based not in Miami’s bustling federal courthouse but in the much quieter city of Fort Pierce, two hours north.
This was an unwelcome development for the Justice Department, which had clashed with Cannon less than a year earlier over its decision to grant Trump’s request for an independent referee to review the classified documents seized by the FBI had been taken. That decision was overturned by a unanimous federal appeals panel, which said Cannon had overstepped her bounds.
Cannon’s handling of the criminal case received even more attention because she allowed defense motions to pile up, causing endless delays, and entertained the Trump team’s arguments — including that he had the right under the Presidential Records Act to take secret documents with him after leaving prison. White House – which was viewed as frivolous by prosecutors and legal experts. All the while she argued with the prosecutors, who became increasingly irritated but did not ask to take her off the case.
She postponed the trial indefinitely in May, weeks before it was set to begin, and held a multi-day hearing the following month on the Trump team’s arguments that Smith was illegally appointed because he was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland and not had been confirmed. by the Senate.
The following month, she made the stunning decision to dismiss the case, endorsing the Trump team’s arguments over Smith’s nomination.
Trump’s efforts to cling to power were well documented by the time he was accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
Nevertheless, the case provided additional details about what prosecutors say were Trump’s far-reaching plans, including his persistent harassment of Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the counting of electoral votes.
The indictment was the result of the cooperation, including before the grand jury, of close aides and other targets of Trump’s pressure campaign. Trump had tried to block Pence from testifying, citing executive privilege, but a federal appeals court forced the ex-vice president to appear — and the resulting indictment details notes Pence took about conversations he had with the president had.
While the secret documents case seemed fairly straightforward, the election interference prosecution against Trump was legally anything but. First, the case involved conduct committed by Trump during his term in office, which put prosecutors in legally complex territory.
Both the judge who presided over Trump’s election interference case and a federal appeals court have firmly dismissed the former president’s claims that he was immune from prosecution.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority took a very different position.
After denying Smith’s December 2023 request to move to a lower court and hear the case immediately, the Supreme Court last April agreed to hear arguments and made it clear by the tenor of its questioning that it was skeptical of the charges against Trump – even though that was not the case. embracing his claims of absolute immunity.
The result was a historic 6-3 opinion granting broad immunity to former presidents. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that ex-presidents were immune from prosecution for actions within their core constitutional duties, presumptively immune from other official actions, and not at all immune from private actions.
The ruling prompted a fiery dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said it “makes a mockery” of the principle that “no one is above the law.”
“Because our Constitution does not protect a former president from responsibility for criminal and treasonous acts, I disagree,” she wrote.
The practical effect of the ruling was to narrow the scope of the prosecution, remove charges from the case related to Trump’s attempts to use the Justice Department’s law enforcement powers to stay in office, and was left in the hands of the court judge. Tanya Chutkan, about which other actions in the indictment are not official actions and can therefore remain part of the indictment.
Smith’s team appealed Cannon’s dismissal of the case to the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
It’s unclear when or how the court will rule, but prosecutors have repeatedly emphasized in their briefs that Cannon’s order is a radical break with decades of precedent and is disconnected from the way judges across the country have ruled on the same question on the legality of special counsel appointments. .
Her conclusion that Smith’s case was illegal because it was made by the attorney general rather than confirmed by the Senate, they warned, “could jeopardize the long-standing operation of the Justice Department and jeopardize hundreds of appointments in the executive branch.”
Assuming the appeals court reverses Cannon, the next big question will be whether it reassigns the case to another judge to continue the proceedings.
The election interference case, meanwhile, continues in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Although there is no chance of a trial before the election – and possibly no chance of a trial at all in the event that Trump wins and has the case dismissed.