A judge in Florida has dismissed a case against Donald Trump which alleged he illegally held on to classified documents.
Florida-based US District Aileen Cannon, who was nominated by Mr Trump, ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, was unlawfully appointed to his role and did not have the authority to bring the case.
It marks another seismic legal victory for Trump, following the 1 July Supreme Court ruling that as a former president, he enjoyed immunity from prosecution for many of his actions in office.
What was the case?
Before they were thrown out just moments ago, Mr Trump faced charges over files he allegedly took from the White House, including deleting CCTV footage of his staff moving boxes at his Florida home.
An indictment in July 2023 charged the former president with 42 offences, superseding one filed earlier in the year.
They accused him of risking some of the country’s most sensitive security secrets, by taking them from the Capitol to his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Details on the US nuclear weapons programmes, potential vulnerabilities of the US and its allies, and plans for retaliatory military attacks were in some of the documents, the federal indictment says.
Two charges of “altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing an object or record” accuse Trump of instructing his valet Walt Nauta and property manager Carols de Oliveria to delete surveillance footage after FBI and Justice Department officials visited Mar-a-Lago in June 2022.
Earlier this year and separate to this case, Mr Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records regarding a cover up of hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels.
This latest development comes just days after he survived an assassination attempt after a gunman shot him in the ear in Pennsylvania.
Source link : https://news.sky.com/story/trump-shooting-assassination-attempt-biden-latest-live-sky-news-blog-13177655
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Publish date : 2024-07-15 12:30:00
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