On Nov. 25, less than a month after the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to dismiss the charges against Trump in two cases linked to Trump’s alleged attempts at derailing the transfer of power after President Joe Biden was elected in 2020. Mere hours later, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted the motion, meaning the federal charges from these cases are dropped.
Here’s the backstory on each case: On July 27, 2023, Trump was indicted with stealing highly sensitive federal documents following his leave from the White House in January 2021; in this Classified Documents Case, he was charged with 37 felony counts and pleaded not guilty. Separately, in the Federal Election Interference Case, on Aug. 1, 2023, after a yearlong investigation, Smith’s team indicted Trump with charges of a “criminal scheme” allegedly involving a campaign of spreading false information about voter fraud and urging Republican officials to undermine the election results during the two months between Election Day and Biden’s inauguration, to which Trump pled not guilty. Both cases have been linked to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Immediately following the charges being dropped on the evening of Nov. 25, Trump posted a video on social media, accompanied by a caption that read in part, “I am officially NOT GUILTY on all counts. All of these WITCH HUNT cases brought by Jack Smith and other corrupt prosecutors against your favorite President, Teflon Don, have been dropped!”
However, Trump’s statement is not quite correct. The charges were dropped, meaning there was no ruling, which means he wasn’t deemed guilty, nor was he deemed not guilty.
Dismissed does not mean
not guilty— Heather (@HeatherR411) November 25, 2024
As Smith wrote in a special statute from the Department of Justice on Nov. 25, he didn’t ask for the charges to be dropped because he thought Trump was not guilty, but rather because of legal precedent: Historically, the Department of Justice has never indicted or prosecuted a sitting president, as that infringes on their presidential duties. “It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President,” Smith wrote in his filing. “After careful consideration, the Department determined that OLC’s [the Office of Legal Counsel] prior opinions concerning the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated … The prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind.”Â
Further, Smith’s motion was written so that Trump could still potentially be prosecuted later on, and Chutkan acknowledged this in her dismissal, writing her decision is “consistent with the government’s understanding that the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office.” Whether the cases will be revived following Trump’s term remains to be seen.
This dismissal comes 50 years after Watergate, a historical landmark event in politics in which former President Richard Nixon was forced to resign from presidency due to allegations of federal crimes and misconduct. Watergate marked the American ideal that no one, even the president, is above the law. However, the dismissal of the federal cases against Trump, as well as the reelection of Trump by over 50% of Americans, dismiss the ideal upheld by Nixon’s removal from office.Â
Despite this dismissal, though, Trump will still remain the country’s first president-elect who is a convicted criminal, as he was found guilty on 34 counts in the Hush Money trial on May 30.