U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will no longer be under federal indictment when inaugurated as the country’s 47th president on January 20.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington quickly dismissed charges Monday that Trump illegally tried to upend his 2020 reelection loss.
She did so after U.S. special counsel Jack Smith acknowledged in a court filing that long-standing Justice Department policy precluded prosecution of a sitting president.
In another court filing, Smith also asked an appellate court in Atlanta to remove Trump from a pending appeal. The prosecutor had originally filed the appeal seeking to reinstate dismissed charges that Trump hoarded hundreds of classified national security documents at his oceanside estate in Florida when he left the presidency in 2021.
The prosecutor said he supported the merits of both indictments against Trump, even as he suggested the charges should be dropped.
On the Truth Social media platform, Trump declared, “These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”
He said that more than $100 million in taxpayer money “has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME. It was a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON.”
