Focus on court ruling in the midst of the political swirl
Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling in the documents case upended established law on appointing independent counsels. Credit: AP
Donald Trump's bid to regain the White House proceeds through a swirl of events after a weekend assassination attempt, as he named his vice-presidential choice and a federal district court judge dismissed a major criminal prosecution against him for keeping and refusing to return top-secret national security documents.
Each consequential development, especially the terrifying shooting in Pennsylvania, will shape our national landscape for generations. There are still few details that would help us learn about the motivation of 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, registered Republican and gun enthusiast. More information is achingly needed to better understand whether Crooks is a repeat of John Hinckley, who thought he could impress the actress Jodie Foster by shooting Ronald Reagan in 1981, or more troublingly emblematic of the nation's latest descent into political violence.
Meanwhile, Trump's selection of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate ushers in a new generation of Republican leaders who transformed from conservative to populist. Vance, who turns 40 next month, tweeted shortly after Crooks fired his AR-15-style rifle that the act was directly related to the rhetoric of the campaign of President Joe Biden.
These cascading events should not obscure the significance of an unorthodox documents-case ruling, which upended established law on how independent counsels are appointed by impeding the long-standing ability of the Justice Department to hand off investigations when there could be a perceived conflict of interest. The DOJ has rightly appealed.
The ruling by Judge Aileen Cannon is a considerable victory for Trump, who was indicted in 2023 by special counsel Jack Smith for keeping national security documents at his Florida home and obstructing the government’s attempts to get them back. Cannon validated a long-shot effort by the former president's defense lawyers to short-circuit the case by focusing on the arcana of Smith's appointment; she did not address the merits of the case.
Although Cannon's lengthy delays in handling pretrial issues made it unlikely Trump would go to trial before Election Day, if at all, the fundamental questions of law need to be resolved.
Attorney General Janet Reno wrote the independent-counsel regulations at issue in 1999 that give responsibility for investigating and prosecuting a criminal case to "a lawyer with a reputation for integrity and impartial decision making" and someone not currently employed by the federal government. The purpose is to avoid even the perception of a conflict of interest in any prosecution but to ensure that the Justice Department's long-established practices and procedures to ensure fairness are followed. It remains to be determined whether Cannon is a jurist struggling to meet the challenges of effectively managing and rigorously analyzing a complex case or, worse, whether she is deliberately favoring Trump who appointed her to the bench.
The reverberations of her ruling will ripple at least as long as the high-profile proceedings that currently overshadow it.
A earlier version of this editorial misstated special counsel Jack Smith's official title.
MEMBERS OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD are experienced journalists who offer reasoned opinions, based on facts, to encourage informed debate about the issues facing our community.
