Justice Department seeks to revive Trump documents case and defends role of special counsel
CNN
Special counsel Jack Smith is arguing to revive his office’s classified documents case against Donald Trump with a vigorous defense of its authority in the first formal filing since Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the criminal case last month.
Special counsel Jack Smith is arguing to revive his office’s classified documents case against Donald Trump with a vigorous defense of its authority in the first formal filing since Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the criminal case last month. In a brief filed with the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Monday, Smith argues that Cannon’s decision to end the Trump case because the prosecutors’ office lacked constitutional authority was “novel” and “lack[ed] merit.” Cannon had ruled the Justice Department didn’t have the ability to appoint or fund special counsels like Smith. Smith’s team also cast the decision from Cannon as not just affecting other special counsel prosecutions – of which there are several ongoing in other courts, against Trump and Hunter Biden, among others – but also as potentially affecting the power of leaders across the federal government. “If the Attorney General lacks the power to appoint inferior officers, that conclusion would invalidate the appointment of every member of the Department who exercises significant authority and occupies a continuing office, other than the few that are specifically identified by statute,” Smith’s office wrote in the 81-page filing. “The district court’s rationale would likewise raise questions about hundreds of appointments throughout the Executive Branch, including in the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury, and Labor,” the prosecutors added.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
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National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
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As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.