Justice Cannon, who has been presiding over the Mar-a-Lago documents case that purported “special prosecutor” Jack Smith brought against Donald Trump, just dismissed the case. Her decision, echoing Justice Clarence Thomas’s analysis in Trump v. United States, held that Jack Smith wasn’t properly appointed and had no authority to indict Trump. Feeling themselves ascendant, the Democrats built an anti-Trump lawfare fortress. However, it was always built on sand, and, with the tide turned, it’s collapsing on them at warp speed.

For those who find themselves confused and overwhelmed by the innumerable lawfare cases Democrats have brought against Donald Trump, the case in Florida was the consequence of the Mar-a-Lago raid. Donald Trump, as president, had plenary power over all national security matters—meaning that neither Congress nor the bureaucrats who work for the president can override his decisions, including de facto declassifying documents by removing them from the White House.

Nevertheless, Jack Smith claimed that Trump had violated national security laws by having a handful of documents at Mar-a-Lago that some bureaucrat had stamped “Classified.” His goal was to imprison Trump for the rest of Trump’s life.

Image: Jack Smith fades away. YouTube screen grab (edited).

However, aside from President Trump’s absolute and unlimited right to declassify documents, there was an even bigger problem with Jack Smith’s indictment, and that was the fact that he had no authority to bring it.

Justice Thomas wrote an important concurrence to Trump v. United States, which arose in the context of Jack Smith indicting Trump in D.C. for events surrounding January 6. The question in that opinion was whether presidents have absolute immunity for all acts arising under their constitutional powers. The answer, of course, is yes.

But Justice Thomas didn’t stop there. In an important concurrence, he laid out the larger problem with the D.C. case, which is that Jack Smith had no authority to bring an indictment in the first place. Smith, a private citizen, claimed his authority to indict Trump because the Attorney General unilaterally appointed him. Writes Thomas,

But, I am not sure that any office for the Special Counsel has been “established by Law,” as the Constitution requires. Art. II, §2, cl. 2. By requiring that Congress create federal offices “by Law,” the Constitution imposes an important check against the President—he cannot create offices at his pleasure. If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President.

Judge Aileen Cannon, in her 93-page order dismissing the entire classified documents case against Trump, opened the opinion by echoing Justice Thomas:

The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution. U.S. Const., Art. II, § 2, cl. 2. Special Counsel Smith’s use of a permanent indefinite appropriation also violates the Appropriations Clause, U.S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 7...

In other words, Smith is a private citizen and had no right to indict Trump or to use taxpayer resources (currently to the tune of around $24 million) to do so. Here is Judge Cannon’s summary of her decision:

Both the Appointments and Appropriations challenges as framed in the Motion raise the following threshold question: is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution? After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no. None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment— 28 U.S.C. §§ 509, 510, 515, 533—gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith. Nor do the Special Counsel’s strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority persuade otherwise.

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 Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers. If the political branches wish to grant the Attorney General power to appoint Special Counsel Smith to investigate and prosecute this action with the full powers of a United States Attorney, there is a valid means by which to do so. He can be appointed and confirmed through the default method prescribed in the Appointments Clause, as Congress has directed for United States Attorneys throughout American history, see 28 U.S.C. § 541, or Congress can authorize his appointment through enactment of positive statutory law consistent with the Appointments Clause.

You can read the whole decision here. The bottom line is that the Mar-a-Lago documents case is dead in the water. Gone. Finito.

And of course, Judge Cannon’s decision will affect the case before Judge Tanya Chutkan in D.C. regarding January 6. I don’t know if Trump’s lawyers have already filed their challenge to Smith in that court, but you can be assured that, if they haven’t, they will.

If Chutkan is wise, she’ll see which way the wind is blowing and, taking Clarence Thomas as her guide, will follow Cannon’s lead and dismiss the case. If she is not wise (and she hasn’t shown past signs of wisdom), she’ll leave the case in place, leading to emergency petitions to the D.C. Appellate court. And if that court is not wise, it’ll quickly go before the Supreme Court, which I have no doubt will definitively slap it down.

The bottom line is that the Biden administration’s practice of persecuting Trump through trumped-up prosecutions is over.

The tide is turning drastically in America as Democrats’ maddened attacks on Trump and his policies are collapsing under their own weight. Democrats’ economic, national security, and immigration policies have devastated Americans. Biden’s foreign policy weaknesses have unleashed war across the planet. Biden himself has been proven to be deep in the throes of dementia, but, by having propped him up for years, Democrats are stuck with him. And just this weekend, it became clear that Democrats’ DEI obsessions may have been a root cause of an almost successful assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

What’s so horrifying for Dems, and so miraculous, is that everything they’ve thrown at Trump has only made him stronger. Like George Washington coming through battle after battle unscathed (the same was true for Churchill during the Boer War), Trump misses death by literally a hair’s breadth. He seems destined to fulfill an important role in America, and nothing the Democrats can do will stop him. The entirely righteous collapse of Smith’s case because Smith is nothing more than an imposter fits right into this amazing narrative.