From The Washington Post:
The federal judge overseeing the classified documents charges against former president Donald Trump has dismissed the indictment on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed, according to a court filing Monday.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ruling is a remarkable win for Trump, whose lawyers have attempted longshot argument after longshot argument to dismiss the case. Other courts have rejected similar arguments to the one that he made in Florida about the legality of Smith’s appointment.
The Justice Department is highly likely to appeal the decision, a legal fight that could end up at the Supreme Court.
Even if Cannon’s ruling is eventually overruled, the decision to dismiss Trump’s indictment adds to a string of legal victories for him in recent weeks, including a sweeping Supreme Court ruling on July 1 that gives former presidents broad immunity for their official acts while in office.
Trump’s legal team has long considered the classified document case to be the strongest of the four criminal cases against him — in part because the acts in question mostly occurred after he left the White House — and the one they were most worried about.
The former president was charged with 40 counts of illegally retaining classified defense information and obstructing government efforts to retrieve the material. Some of the documents found in an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club, contained information about top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them, The Washington Post reported last year