Lawyers for President Trump filed a motion on Thursday to dismiss charges related to the 2020 election brought against him by Special Counsel Jack Smith, claiming that Smith’s appointment was unlawful.
Trump’s legal team previously succeeded in a separate case involving classified records, arguing that Smith had been unlawfully appointed. In July, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, presiding over the Southern District of Florida, dismissed those charges based on the “unlawful appointment and funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith.” Trump had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
On Thursday, Trump’s attorneys filed a new motion in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where Judge Tanya Chutkan is overseeing the case. The filing seeks to dismiss the superseding indictment and calls for injunctive relief, citing violations of the Constitution’s Appointments and Appropriations Clauses.
“President Donald J. Trump respectfully requests leave to file this proposed motion to dismiss the Superseding Indictment and for injunctive relief—which is timely and, alternatively, supported by good cause—based on violations of the Constitution’s Appointments and Appropriations Clauses,” the filing states.
The Appointments Clause requires that certain officials, including “Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States,” be appointed by the President with Senate approval. Trump’s legal team argues that Smith’s appointment was invalid as he was never confirmed by the Senate.
“The proposed motion establishes that this unjust case was dead on arrival—unconstitutional even before its inception,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.
According to the motion, Attorney General Merrick Garland violated the Appointments Clause in November 2022 by appointing private citizen Smith to target Trump while he was actively campaigning for the presidency. The attorneys claim Garland lacked the statutory authority to do so.
“Garland did so following improper public urging from Biden to target President Trump, as reported at the time in 2022, and repeated recently by Biden through his inappropriate instruction to ‘lock him up’ while Smith presses forward with the case unlawfully as the Presidential election rapidly approaches,” the filing states.
Trump’s legal team also referred to recent comments made by Biden, in which he said, “we got to lock him up” in reference to Trump. Biden quickly added, “Politically lock him up, lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”
In addition to challenging Smith’s appointment, Trump’s attorneys argue that the Special Counsel violated the Appropriations Clause by improperly using more than $20 million in taxpayer funds, and an additional $16 million from unspecified Department of Justice components, to target Trump and his allies during the 2024 election campaign.
Read the motion to dismiss here.
