When U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against Donald Trump, the man who nominated her, she didn’t address whether or not the former president was entitled to store top-secret national security documents in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. Rather, she argued that the case was illegitimate because the prosecutor, special counsel Jack Smith, was unlawfully appointed — a ruling that rejected prior Supreme Court precedent as non-binding while at the same time citing conservative Justice Clarence Thomas as if he were the ultimate authority on how and when the attorney general might delegate his powers.
Smith’s response, filed Monday, boils down to this: Dude, come on.
In an 81-page filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which has already twice reversed Cannon’s decisions in the case, the special counsel’s team points out that, since at 1974, no other court has denied the right of an attorney general to appoint an outside prosecutor to handle a case.........