Two federal cases against Donald Trump dismissed.

 

President elect Donald Trump and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. ABC News/AFP/Getty.

Two federal cases against Donald Trump, the "election interference" and the appeal of the "documents" case have been dismissed. ABC News. The cases were dropped by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith due to a long standing DOJ policy to not prosecute sitting Presidents. The prosecutions of two of Trump's co-defendants in the classified documents case will continue through an appeal. The cases were dropped without prejudice meaning that they could be taken up again, but that would be extraordinarily unlikely as the statute of limitations will have passed in both cases by the time leaves office in 2029. 

My Comment:

As expected, these charges were dropped after Trump got elected in a landslide. The cases were never on any sort of accepted legal ground and the classified documents case was especially ridiculous and had elements of the FBI trying to stage photos to make it look way worse than it actually was. Given that both Joe Biden and Mike Pence were "guilty" of the same "crime" and didn't face charges it was clearly a selective prosecution. 

Dropping the cases was always going to happen when Trump got elected. If they hadn't, Trump would have simply pardoned himself once he entered office, and he may do so for the other two co-defendants in the documents case. But the DOJ has a policy, which is backed by the Supreme Court, that you can't prosecute a sitting president. 

Even if Trump had lost it was likely that the cases would have been dropped. The cases were on shaky legal ground due to how the Special Prosecutor was appointed and the cases themselves were weak. Like I said, Trump's lawyers would have had a good case in the documents case for selective prosecution since Biden and Pence were not charged for the exact same thing. And it was very unlikely that a jury would convict a sitting president. 

I do think that these cases and the other two charges against Trump, and the idiotic defamation trial by E. Jean Carroll, were a major factor in Trump getting elected. I get the feeling that most people thought the prosecutions were ridiculous and brought for blatantly political reasons. It was essentially an attack on democracy, no other politician would have been charged with the crimes that Trump was charged with. 

It will also ensure his legacy, no matter what happens with his 2nd term. They through everything they could at Trump and they couldn't stop him. It made him look bad ass and will add to his mystique. The entire force of the federal government couldn't take him down.

The only questions that remain are the "hush money" case that Trump was convicted of. That case too seems very likely to be reversed on appeal and it is extremely unlikely that Trump will ever serve a day in prison for it. That case was always the one that was most ridiculous as Trump was convicted of something that had never been charged with before and there was some pretty obvious reversible error since they used the unique legal theory that there was a conspiracy to further a 2nd crime without ever defining what the 2nd crime was.  

Does this mean that Trump won't face any legal problems in his 2nd term? Who knows? You would think that the Democrats would have learned their lessons and not try this again, but you never know. With Trump winning the electoral college and popular vote by a decent margin it's hard to argue that he doesn't have a mandate (though some on the left are doing just that). Trying to imprison a popular president over nonsense will not play well.