WASHINGTON DC: 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.
(VOA)
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