Special counsel Jack Smith filed court documents on Monday to dismiss the criminal election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office in January, citing long-standing Justice Department policy prohibiting the indictment and prosecution of a sitting president. The request was subsequently granted by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan just a few hours after Smith’s filing, meaning the charges stemming from Trump’s alleged attempt to undermine the 2020 election on Jan. 6 are over.

While the dismissal was inevitable, Smith requested that the case against Trump be dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning there would be nothing barring prosecutors from bringing the same charges again in the future.

In her order granting the request, Chutkan wrote that “dismissal without prejudice is appropriate here,” noting that Trump’s presidential immunity from prosecution will not be permanent.

“Dismissal without prejudice is also consistent with the Government’s understanding that the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office,” Chutkan wrote.

In something not entirely unlike an “all hands” call to action, Republican attorneys general from 20 different states are now trying to convince a federal court of appeals that the Mar-a-Lago documents indictment against Donald Trump should remain dismissed.

The 33-page amici curiae — or friends of the court — filing was submitted late Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The motion purports to represent the states of Florida, Iowa, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, And West Virginia.

In yet another iteration of a sustained legal pile-on, the brief argues special counsel Jack Smith was appointed to his position “unlawfully” — in violation of strong, time-honored executive, or presidential, authority.

“[U]nlike a U.S. Attorney, Smith faces next-to-zero presidential accountability,” the brief reads. “He was not appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Nor is he subject to the plenary supervision of an official who was.”

The battle over the dismissal of the indictment in the Mar-a-Lago documents case is heating up in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, as a group of conservative amici curiae, or friends of the court, on Friday argued to maintain the pro-Donald Trump status quo.

In their 35-page brief in support of the defendants, several right-wing nonprofit groups — led by 501(c)(3) America’s Future — argue that special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to his position in violation of the appointments and appropriations clauses.

“Because there was no legislation specifically creating an office of Special Counsel when the Attorney General appointed Mr. Smith on November 18, 2022, the challenged appointment must be invalidated because Congress had not established the office of Special Counsel as the Appointments Clause requires,” the filing reads.

As is often the case in the several-months-long litigation over the constitutional vitality of Smith’s appointment, the appropriations clause argument is a knock-on, or derivative, claim. To hear opponents of the special counsel’s office tell it, any spending that occurred after the unlawful appointment is, perforce, also unlawful.

Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday rubbished the latest efforts by former President Donald Trump to have the Jan. 6 prosecution against him dismissed as both “untimely and without merit.”

Earlier this month, Trump’s attorneys ventured forth with a reprise of arguments that secured a dismissal of the Mar-a-Lago documents case over the summer. Namely: the defendant argued the prosecutor in charge of the case was given his authority in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s appointments and appropriations clauses.

Now, the special counsel’s office argues that the retread claim was made far too late — and in violation of binding precedent in the D.C. Circuit.

Not at all persuaded by Donald Trump’s request to keep special counsel Jack Smith’s immunity appendix under wraps until after the 2024 election, the former president’s Jan. 6 judge on Thursday scoffed at the “oxymoronic proposition” that hiding information from the public for political reasons will enhance its “understanding of this case.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday refused to grant Trump a stay extension until Nov. 14, meaning that on Friday the stay will lift and she will “direct the Clerk of the Court to docket the Appendix, with the Government’s proposed redactions.”

Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday filed a massive opening brief addressing presidential immunity issues in the Jan. 6 case against former President Donald Trump.

But substantial portions of that brief may never see the light of day — at least so far as the general public is concerned.

Earlier this week, the prosecutor was given permission to file an “oversized brief” by Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — frustrating a request by the defense to keep the special counsel confined to the typical 45-page limit under local court rules.

In an order, the court gave the government up to 180 pages to make their case — exactly quadruple the typical limits.

Late Thursday, a spokesperson for the special counsel’s office confirmed that their brief had been filed — but the public docket in the case showed no evidence of that filing. In fact, it’s unlikely to.

“We have complied with the court’s order,” the spokesperson told Politico.

The Special Counsel’s Office and Donald Trump’s defense both responded Tuesday to an order in the Mar-a-Lago case surrounding jury instructions on the Presidential Records Act (PRA), and the prosecution repeatedly hammered the former president’s arguments as “fictional,” “invented,” and “legally erroneous.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on March 18 caused a stir by ordering the parties to file “proposed jury instructions limited to the essential elements” of Trump’s Espionage Act charges and to “engage with” two “competing scenarios and offer alternative draft text that assumes each scenario to be a correct formulation of the law to be issued to the jury [.]”

The special counsel can “redact, substitute, or delete” two categories of classified information and “most” of a third category from shareable discovery, the judge in former President Donald Trump’s Espionage Act prosecution ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon wrote that Jack Smith’s motions prevailed as far as categories 3 and 4 are concerned — the first dealing with “documents relating to a potential government witness” and the second with “classified information which the Special Counsel seeks to delete from discovery in its entirety.”

Cannon also granted “most of the Category 2 requests,” but not all.

“Category 2 contains a subset of After-Action Reports (‘AARs’) and related emails from which the Special Counsel seeks to redact limited words and phrases,” she wrote. “The vast majority of the requests are not topically related to the charged documents and thus neither relevant nor helpful to the defense. A very limited number of redaction requests, however, cannot be resolved at this stage.”

The government witness known in court documents as “Trump Employee 5” and now known publicly to be longtime former Mar-a-Lago valet Brian Butler shed more light on what went on behind closed doors when he sat for interviews with the Special Counsel’s Office and testified before the grand jury that went on to indict the former president.

Revealing that he met with special counsel Jack Smith’s office up to five times over a period of months, Butler told NBC News that the grand jury setting was a “dark” closet-like room filled with roughly 20 grand jurors. Prosecutors “were interested in everything” he had to say during interviews, Butler added.

That may not have been the case for at least one of the grand jurors, however. Butler said he “could see their eyes shut.”

Butler also appeared Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber,” where he revealed that he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but will not do so in 2024.

The erstwhile Mar-a-Lago employee of two decades, as he said in his first public interview with CNN, stated his belief that Trump wanted surveillance video deleted because he knew he wasn’t supposed to have national defense information and knew that the Presidential Records Act didn’t protect him.

“The way I see it, if these were his personal documents or he’s allowed to have these by the PRA, why would you need to ask questions about video footage?” Butler asked. “Why would you possibly move the documents when they are coming to retrieve them. To me, it just doesn’t make any sense. On top of that, why would you put two low-level employees in the position they’re in if he you did nothing wrong and these were your personal documents?”

Pressed as to whether he had witnessed “part of a cover-up,” Butler said: “I think it’s very possible.”

“From what I saw, the questions — why would they ask about video footage, how long it’s deleted for?” Butler asked. “Those are conversations Carlos [De Oliveira] told me he was asked with finding out prior to Walt [Nauta]’s arrival on a secret trip.”

Here, Butler was recounting the details as they appeared in the indictment.

Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira on June 25, 2022, allegedly told Trump Employee 5 that valet Walt Nauta was en route from Bedminster, N.J., to Mar-a-Lago but asked the witness not to tell anyone about the “secret” trip that related to surveillance camera footage.

“DE OLIVEIRA also told Trump Employee 5 that NAUTA wanted DE OLIVEIRA to talk to Trump Employee 4 to see how long camera footage was stored,” the indictment said. “Shortly after arriving in Palm Beach on the evening of June 25, NAUTA went to The Mar-a-Lago Club and met with DE OLIVEIRA at 5:46 p.m. At The Mar-a-Lago Club, NAUTA and DE OLIVEIRA went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the Storage Room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.”

Two days later, De Oliveira told another employee — “Trump Employee 4” — that “the boss” wanted the video footage server deleted, the indictment further alleged.

On CNN, Butler recalled helping Nauta load boxes of documents onto a Trump plane headed for New Jersey, documents the witness said he later realized “were the boxes that were in the indictment, the white bankers boxes.” Before he left Trump’s employ and became a witness for the prosecution, Butler counted De Oliveira as one of his “best friends.” Now, he said, they don’t talk anymore.

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The man appointed to prosecute the government’s case against Donald Trump over his alleged wrongful retention of classified documents responded to “meritless” arguments from former U.S. Attorney General Edward Meese III, a Federalist Society co-founder, and Citizens United asserting that he lacks legal authority to prosecute the former president.

The filing from special counsel Jack Smith came on Friday, one day after U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon refused Trump’s attempt to dismiss the first 32 counts in his superseding indictment as being “constitutionally vague” under the Espionage Act. Cannon has not yet ruled on Trump’s motion to dismiss based on his claim that while in office, the Presidential Records Act gave him the authority to simply declare classified documents as personal documents.

Meese, who in 1985 was appointed as the 75th U.S. Attorney General by President Ronald Reagan and Citizens United, the group best known for gutting federal campaign finance law via the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 decision, were joined in the amicus brief by Boston University School of Law Professor Gary Lawson and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Professor Steven Calabresi — who cofounded one of the three original chapters of the Federalist Society.

The “Meese Amicus,” as Smith refers to it in his filing, largely focused on issues already raised by Trump’s legal team — that the U.S. Attorney General does not have the statutory authority to appoint a special counsel.

“Smith does not have authority to prosecute this case,” the amici argued. “Those actions can be taken only by persons properly appointed as federal officers to properly created federal offices. But neither Smith nor the position of Special Counsel under which he purportedly acts meets those criteria. He wields tremendous power, answerable to no one. And that is a serious problem for the rule of law — whatever one may think of former President Donald Trump or the conduct Smith challenges in the underlying case.”