STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Following up on breaking news in this hour - a federal judge has thrown out one of the four indictments against former President Donald Trump. It's the indictment for removing classified documents from the White House and then declining to return them, the classified documents case in Florida, which was overseen by Judge Aileen Cannon. Judge Cannon has now said that a special prosecutor who is pursuing that case - his appointment, rather - was unconstitutional. We don't know when exactly the judge wrote this 93-page opinion, but it is released today on the opening day of the Republican Convention. NPR's Greg Allen has been following the story all along, and he's on the line from Florida. Hey, there, Greg.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: What do you gather from reading some of this ruling?
ALLEN: Right. Well, a lengthy ruling, as you say - Judge Cannon was responding to a motion that was brought by Trump's lawyers. They said that Jack Smith's appointment violated the Constitution. It was mostly around the question of how the office is funded. The question is whether the special counsel position required explicit funding from Congress or whether it could be paid for by the Justice Department. Of course, the Justice Department has been paying for it all along, and they said that that violates the Constitution, and that his appointment was then invalid. And because of that she said she's released - she's going to dismiss the case.
INSKEEP: Let me just follow up on that. Is this something that courts have ruled on before, whether special counsels are constitutional or not?
ALLEN: Right. Well, the law has changed a lot over the years, and so it's hard to say exactly, but the special counsel - and earlier than this, the independent counsel - have been consistently upheld by the courts in many other cases going back to the Watergate era, and Congress then rewrote the law to make it so it's even clearer. It was upheld again - in the special counsel office was upheld during the Iran-Contra proceedings. And then it's been brought up in almost every case, many other courts have upheld it in the past. It's been brought up in the case in the January 6 charges against the former president that's been brought in Washington, D.C. It hasn't been ruled on in that case. But in all these - despite all these earlier findings, Judge Cannon thought that she wanted to look at this. She took extensive briefing on this, and she held a hearing on it. And she weighed in on an issue that's more typically taken up at the appeals court level or even by the U.S. Supreme Court. But Cannon, a Trump appointee, decided to weigh in, and she's dismissed the case today.
INSKEEP: I think you've given me an idea of what the pushback from special counsel Jack Smith would have been in recent months in this motion. They argued that this is simply the way that it is done and that it's been upheld by courts in the past. Is that what you're saying?
ALLEN: Right. And it's something that gets along around the kind of arcane points about whether he's - what kind of officer he is and the designation of what his position is. And that's what some of the briefings went around on that. But now we'll have to see this - clearly this - her decision is going to be appealed very quickly, and I think the 11th Circuit Court is going to have to look at this. And we'll see what's going to happen. It could go all the way to Supreme Court quickly because it's a weighty decision which applies to a lot of other cases besides this one.
INSKEEP: OK, we're going to be continuing to follow this. There's a lot to say and a lot to read. NPR's Greg Allen, thanks so much.
ALLEN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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