Breaking news on the classified documents case.
Let's get right to Ken Delanian.
Ken Jose. In a remarkable development,
Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida has dismissed dismissed the indictment
against Donald Trump in this classified documents case and his
Co defendants on the grounds that the appointment of the
special counsel violated the Appointments clause of the Constitution.
This is an issue that has been litigated and other
special counsels has never succeeded.
But Judge Aileen Cannon has accepted the arguments of the
defense that the appointment of Jack Smith and other special
counsels by inference has been improper and illegal.
And I'll just read you briefly from the opinion here.
She says the bottom line is this.
The Appointments Clause is a critical constitutional restriction stemming from
the separation of powers,
and it gives to Congress a considered role in determining
the propriety of vesting appointment power for inferior officers.
The governments position, she says,
effectively usurps that important legislative authority,
transferring it to a head of department.
Let me translate that. The attorney general appoints the special
counsel.
There's no law. There's no act of Congress establishing the
Office of Special Counsel after the independent counsel law went
away.
What the what Donald Trump's lawyers argued is that that's
improper.
The special counsel has a lot of power.
He should be established by law and confirmed by the
Senate,
and he's not. And Judge Aileen Cannon has accepted that
argument and dismissed this indictment.
Now, this is very likely to be appealed by the
special counsel to the Circuit Court and may go all
the way up to the Supreme Court.
And what's really interesting here,
Jose is in the immunity
opinion, Judge Clarence Thomas filed a concurrence where he raised
this issue and he all but said that he believes
that this,
the appointment of Jack Smith and other special counsels,
was unconstitutional under the appointments Clause.
And many of us said at the time that that
was in essence giving Judge Cannon a leg to stand
on here if she wanted to rule in this direction,
which no other Judge Jose,
no other judge has ruled.
And now she's done that and she has dismissed the
indictment in the classified documents case against Donald Trump and
his Co defendants.
The entire indictment dismissed by Judge Cannon.
That's correct. I want to go to Vaughn Hilliard,
who's standing by. Vaughn, just monumental breaking news on this
case.
And I'll just say this here,
Jose, of course, we do not understand what the timing
of this is and if it correlated at all to
the apparent assassination just 36 hours ago in Pennsylvania here.
But when we are looking at this ruling by Judge
Cannon,
it takes me to a conversation I had last night
with the close ally of Donald Trump's who is is
a part of the convention team here in Milwaukee in
why? And I asked him about what this moment with
the attempted assassination means.
And as Donald Trump is calling for a unified America,
I said, what does that look like?
He said in part that needs to be the end
of these prosecutions against him.
And less than 12 hours since we've had that,
I had that conversation with that individual.
There is the federal indictment here related to the transfer
of classified,
alleged transfer of classified documents to his Mar A Lago
property as well as the obstruction of justice to cover
up the alleged obstruction of justice to cover up the
fact that he had those documents with the two Co
defendants is now dropped.
As Ken said, this will be able to be appealed
to the 11th Circuit here.
But this is a notable legal victory for Donald Trump
in the immediate.
We are 3 1/2 months to the election,
of course, in a matter of hours from now,
I believe about 3 hours,
four hours from now is when the more than 2000
delegates are going to fill into this arena here for
the beginning of this convention.
You're going to have the prime time addresses here.
We are waiting for his VP announcement for Donald Trump.
This is a considerable victory here.
Of course, there is much that we can go through
with that indictment in what's the immunity decision ultimately
could have meant to this as we begin to work
through this more than 90 page decision here by Judge
Cannon to dismiss.
But what was alleged inside of this indictment was very
serious and now clearly pushing to dismiss it on the
grounds that the special counsel was improperly appointed by the
Department of Justice to oversee this case.
Of course, we are waiting to see Donald Trump and
whether we could see him as soon as today.
We have not seen him publicly out of some quick
campaign videos that they have put out from his campaign
team of him leaving his plane.
I just talked with with a close individual with his
campaign here just a matter of minutes ago before this
case was dismissed.
And I asked how his conversations with him have been
like.
And he said that he is in great spirits right
now.
So for Donald Trump, he is going to be joined
by his family here.
He is going to be joined by the closest allies
of the Republican Party.
There is a lot at stake with this indictment being
tossed here as we begin to make our way through
this decision.
But of course, it will be likely appealed.
At the same time, it calls into question whether the
federal indictment related to the federal election interference charges against
him could be potentially tossed.
And if if in fact,
as we saw from the immunity decision,
Judge Clarence Thomas writing in there
and almost giving an out in an opportunity for Judge
Cannon to go forward with this dismissal.
This is a notable moment for not only this presidential
campaign,
but also the acts of the former president upon leaving
the White House.