On Monday, a couple of hours before the beginning of the Republican National Convention, Judge Aileen Cannon decided to dismiss the entire “Classified Documents” case. Shouldn’t really have been a surprise to anyone because Judge Cannon has been trying to deep-six this thing from the beginning. 

The judge, who was appointed on November 13, 2020, or at the very tail end of the Trump presidency, was actually born in Colombia. Before her appointment she had been an Assistant United States Attorney with basically no judicial experience. She did, however, have a long-time membership in the Federalist Society since she was a law student. (Those are the people who are bringing you Project 2025).

This case, of course, involves the mishandling of highly classified documents by Trump. Just to remind people, under the Presidential Records Act, presidential documents must be transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) by the end of a president’s term. But Trump didn’t do that with many of his documents. By May of 2021, NARA became aware of missing documents and began its efforts to retrieve them. They eventually retrieved 15 boxes, with Trump’s lawyers certifying that was all there was. But it soon came to the attention of the FBI that there were more. In May 2022, a grand jury subpoenaed any remaining documents, which led to the famous FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. That search recovered over 13,000 government documents, including 300 classified documents related to national defense secrets.

Over 13,000!

But they still weren’t finished. 

More documents were retrieved in 2023 after the FBI received information about others’ actions to hide documents. 

In case you think Trump didn’t take many files, here is a summation:

Of the fifteen boxes he eventually returned to the National Archives 184 unique documents bearing classification markings were contained.

• 67 documents marked as Confidential
• 92 documents marked as Secret
• 25 documents marked as Top Secret In June 2022, Trump’s attorneys returned thirty-seven additional unique documents bearing classification markings:
• 5 documents marked as Confidential
• 16 documents marked as Secret
• 17 documents marked as Top Secret 

The August 2022 search uncovered another cache of classified documents.

• 103 unique documents bearing classification markings The search of Trump’s office revealed:
• 27 documents bearing classification markings
  • 3 documents marked as Confidential 
  • 17 documents marked as Secret 
  • 7 documents marked as Top Secret
• 43 empty folders with classified banners
• 28 empty folders labeled “return to staff secretary/ military aide”
• Several documents had colored cover sheets showing their classification status
• 3 classified documents were located “in the desks in the ’45 Office’ 

The search of the Mar-a-Lago storage room produced:

• 76 documents bearing classification markings
  • 28 documents marked as Confidential 
  • 37 documents marked as Secret 
  • 11 documents marked as Top Secret, including Sensitive Compartmented Information (“ SCI”)

That is an awful lot of documents.

Why did Trump take these documents and refuse to return them? Did he want to have “kompromat” on people, like the president of France, to whom some documents are reported to relate? Was it to be able to use the documents in deals with the Saudis or even possibly to sell them? We will never know without a trial and maybe not even with a trial.

In any event, the formal case was filed on June 8, 2023 not only against Trump, but also against Walt Nauta, his personal aide and Mar-a-Lago maintenance chief Carlos De Oliveira, who had been complicit in hiding documents. Judge Cannon initially set a trial date for May 20, 2024. But since then the trial has been delayed a number of times, while Judge Cannon entertained motions she did not need to entertain, asked for briefings that were unwarranted, refused to rule on motions, and now finally, dismissed the case.

That dismissal was made possible, of course, by Clarence Thomas’ concurrence in Trump v. United States, that startling court case where the majority of the Supreme Court invented a broad theory of presidential immunity out of whole cloth, and without any reference to the text of the Constitution.

In that concurrence, Justice Thomas — who by any reasonable standard should have recused himself from the consideration of the case — opined that special prosecutor Jack Smith’s appointment was extra-constitutional.

Note that none of the other eight justices, not even Justice Alito, joined him in his concurrence.

Nevertheless, Judge Cannon used that concurrence as the basis for her dismissal.

So what happens now? 

If Trump wins the presidency it won’t matter, because he will order his justice department to stop all the prosecutions against him. (That might not apply to the prosecution in Georgia, but that is a discussion for another day.)

If Trump does not win the presidency, this decision can be appealed — and  Jack Smith has already voiced his intention to appeal — and is likely to be overturned.

But it will never be heard before the November election.

Can it then be sent to a different judge? Honestly, I don’t know.

There is also the possibility that Trump serves for four years, then a Democrat is elected in 2028, and the prosecutions are revived. They would have to be within the statute of limitations — and maybe they could be tolled — but (again) those are all complicated discussions for another day.

But I will just note this for the cognoscenti, to see what kind of a circular firing squad any attempt to hold Trump to account has become:

1. When Trump was impeached (twice!), we were told that even if he were not convicted by the Senate, he could always be convicted in a criminal trial;
2. When the criminal trials were brought, the Supreme Court defenestrated them by inventing this broad grant of immunity;
3. When some states tried to keep Trump off the ballot for engaging in an insurrection, the Supreme Court (again) intervened to determine that the 14th amendment could not apply without some specific action on the part of Congress.

And now, that an assassin’s bullet missed him, evangelicals are already willing to anoint this as the will of God.

It really does seem to be the case that no court, no institution, no anything is ever going to hold this motherfucker to account.