A D.C. federal judge dismissed the Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump after Special Counsel Jack Smith said that the Justice Department had concluded that the federal prosecutions of the President-elect cannot go on now that he’s been re-elected.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan for the District of Columbia dismissed the cases without prejudice, meaning the criminal cases could in theory be revived later. But the difficulty of navigating statutes of limitations, fading memories, and the Supreme Court’s July immunity ruling makes the prospects of Trump ever facing accountability extremely unlikely. Under Special Counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors alleged a wide-ranging, multi-pronged conspiracy to block the peaceful transfer of power.
But now, after four years, Trump has won again. Per the motion to dismiss, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel seemingly issued an opinion in recent weeks expanding on its previous holding that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.
Per the filing, the OLC told Smith in response to a request for guidance that the policy against indicting sitting presidents also applies to situations in which an indicted person is elected to the Oval Office.
In a separate filing in the 11th Circuit on Monday, Smith indicated that he would move to dismiss an ongoing appeal from the Mar-a-Lago records case against Trump. He said that he would continue the case against Trump’s two co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos DeOliveira.
Judge Chutkan went out of her way in the order dismissing the Jan. 6 case to note that there was “no indication” that Smith was seeking to drop the case out of a broader scheme of “prosecutorial harassment.” Chutkan was citing another case, but she’s denying a line that Trump has used throughout years of attempts to investigate him and hold him accountable: in the Smith cases, there was no harassment.
Monday’s filings marked the end of a stunning and bizarre series of events without parallel in U.S. history: a criminal defendant won a presidential election, thereby causing the charges against him to be removed. It’s yet another example of Trump’s ability to glide a path through the legal system. In July, the Supreme Court issued an expansive immunity ruling saying that presidents could not be criminally charged for most official conduct. Now, OLC, per today’s filing in the January 6 case, has issued an opinion saying not just that the prosecutions against Trump must be dismissed on account of his election, but that they cannot be held in abeyance — the charges themselves must be dismissed.
Smith ended the request for dismissal by saying that while the Constitution requires him to ask for the charges to be tossed, a President’s immunity has a “temporary nature.” The Constitution, he added, does not require “dismissal with prejudice.” He could always refile in four years, as remote a possibility as that may be.
