Special Counsel Jack Smith has moved to drop charges against Donald Trump in the federal election.
The president-elect faced four charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to dismiss the case without prejudice because of the policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president.
It has been seen that the case is likely to disappear since Trump’s stunning victory in the November election.
A grand jury indicted Trump in the case on August 1 last year, but it hung for months while the Supreme Court considered Trump lawyers’ “immunity” arguments.
The court ultimately ruled in a 6-3 decision by the conservative majority that Trump enjoyed broad immunity from prosecution for official actions as president. That prompted Smith, who regularly calls Trump “deranged” and has vowed to fire, to file a superseding indictment that narrowed the charges.
Trump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction and attempted obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
New White House communications director Steven Cheung called the move a “major victory for the rule of law.”
It comes days after a New York judge dismissed Trump’s hush money case following his conviction on 34 charges of falsifying company records. An existing Justice Department policy prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president.
It ends a lengthy investigation that cost taxpayers $50 million and never went to trial, in a case that prosecutors didn’t bring until halfway through President Joe Biden’s term.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has moved to drop charges against Donald Trump in the federal election
Early in Biden’s term, hundreds of people were prosecuted for entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, when Trump supporters stormed the building on the day Congress met to count electoral votes certified by states.
Then, in another landmark decision, AG Merrick Garland announced that he had appointed Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor, to investigate “whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transition of power following the 2020 presidential election or with the certification of the Electoral College vote. held on or about January 6, 2021.”
Smith also oversaw the classified documents case against Trump, who was accused of taking national security documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House.
Smith has already said he plans to leave before Trump comes to power.