President-elect Donald Trump responded Monday to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s decision to dismiss two criminal charges against him.
“These cases, like every other case I have been forced to handle, are meaningless and illegal, and should never have been brought,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
“It was a political hijacking and a low point in our nation’s history that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON. BRING AMERICA BACK BIG AGAIN!” Trump added.
Vice President-elect JD Vance said Trump could have “spent the rest of his life in prison” if the outcome of the 2024 election had been different.
“If Donald J. Trump had lost an election, he very well could have spent the rest of his life in prison,” Vance wrote on X. “These prosecutions have always been political. Now is the time to ensure that what is happened to President Trump never happens again in this country.”
Smith, in subsequent court filings, cited the Justice Department’s “categorical” policy that he said bars the prosecution of a sitting president as the reason for his request to drop the state interference case. federal elections and the classified documents affair.
Later Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan dismissed the federal election subversion case against the president-elect.
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump attends a press conference to deliver the “Trump Will Fix It” speech at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, October 29, 2024.
Marco Bello/Reuters
Trump has pleaded not guilty to four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, brought by Smith in connection with Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. The case has been plagued by delays and developments, including a Supreme Court ruling that a president is entitled to some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts performed while in office.
Trump also pleaded not guilty to all 40 counts related to his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House. The case was thrown out by a federal judge in Florida in July, although Smith appealed the decision.
During his presidential campaign, Trump told his supporters that he was their “punishment” and that he was “indicted for you.”
Steven Cheung, the new White House communications director, called Smith’s decision “a major victory for the rule of law” and said Americans want Trump to end the “weaponization of our justice system “.
Some Trump allies on Capitol Hill also celebrated the development.
“A huge victory for America, President Trump, and the fight against the militarization of the justice system,” House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X. “This was ALWAYS about politics and not by law.”
California Democratic Sen.-elect Adam Schiff, however, said the Justice Department and the courts “have failed to uphold the principle that no one is above the law.”
Schiff was a member of the House Jan. 6 committee that spent more than a year investigating the Capitol attack. The panel, which voted to recommend charges against Trump, identified Trump and his actions after the 2020 election as the “central cause” of what happened on January 6, 2021.
“The Justice Department in failing to promptly investigate the events of January 6, and the courts in deliberately delaying the progress of the case and granting immunity,” Schiff wrote on X. “The public deserved better.”
