The former president and Republican candidate for the 2024 elections is accused of mishandling classified government files at his Florida home.
U.S. special counsel Jack Smith has appealed a judge's decision to dismiss a criminal case accusing former President Donald Trump of mishandling classified government documents.
Smith filed the appeal Wednesday with the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Court of Appeals, just days after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in a major victory for the former president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
Cannon ruled Monday that Smith's 2022 nomination violated the U.S. Constitution because Congress did not authorize Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel with the degree of power and independence that Smith wields.
Trump, who appointed Cannon to the court in 2020, immediately welcomed the decision and called for other charges against him to be dismissed as well.
“This dismissal of the lawless indictment in Florida should be just the first step, quickly followed by the dismissal of ALL witch hunts,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth.
The Republican former president faces three other criminal cases, two of which relate to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to his Democratic rival, President Joe Biden.
Trump is expected to face Biden once again in the US elections in November.
Commenting on Wednesday's appeal, a spokesman for Trump's 2024 campaign reiterated the former president's previous call to dismiss all cases against him.
In a report published earlier this week from the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Al Jazeera's Patty Culhane said Cannon's ruling ran counter to decades of US court decisions.
Culhane explained that since the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, American judges and courts have repeatedly said that the US Department of Justice can appoint special prosecutors.
“This [ruling by Cannon] “This goes against decades of legal precedent,” Culhane said.
The decision followed another legal victory for Trump after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that former presidents enjoy broad immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts.
Cannon's ruling dismissed charges against Trump and co-defendants Walt Nauta, the former president's personal assistant, and Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where the documents were found during an FBI search in 2022.
Trump was accused of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents, including records related to the U.S. nuclear program and potential military vulnerabilities, at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in January 2021.
He and his two co-defendants were also charged with obstructing an investigation into Trump's handling of the material. All three have pleaded not guilty.
