Three weeks after Trump won the 2024 election, special counsel Jack Smith asked Judge Tanya Chutkan on November 25, 2024 to dismiss the federal case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, and asked the Eleventh Circuit to drop his appeal in the classified documents case as to Trump. The filing said the Justice Department “has determined that OLC's prior opinions concerning the Constitution's prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.” It added: “That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government's proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind.” Trump's lawyers did not object. Chutkan dismissed the case without prejudice that day, and the appeals court granted the request on November 26.
Trump's legal strategy had brought the cases to this point. His appeal produced the Supreme Court's July 1, 2024 ruling that a former president has “at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” which forced Smith to obtain a narrower indictment, and “Trump's strategy of delay in the case ensured that a trial never got underway before the November election,” CNN reported. In the documents case, his lawyers had already won dismissal from Judge Aileen Cannon in July (Judge Cannon, a Trump Appointee, Throws Out His Classified Documents Case on the Opening Day of the Republican Convention). In October Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt he would fire Smith “within two seconds.” The Justice Department policy that ended the cases is the same one that, NBC News noted, “helped Trump avoid being charged in connection with Robert Mueller's special counsel probe during Trump's first presidency.”
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the dismissal “a major victory for the rule of law,” and Trump wrote that “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.” Neither case was dismissed on its merits. The government's filing said “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant.” Smith left the Justice Department on January 10, 2025, according to a government filing, and his report on the election case, released January 14, said: “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.” That is the prosecutor's assessment, not a verdict; Trump was never tried. Trump called Smith “Deranged” and claimed he “was fired today by the DOJ,” though the government's own filing says Smith “separated from the Department” and CNN and Fox News reported that he resigned.
Once in office, Trump's Justice Department finished the job. On January 29, 2025, it moved to dismiss the remaining documents appeal against Nauta and De Oliveira “with prejudice,” and the Eleventh Circuit dismissed it on February 11. Cannon blocked release of Smith's second volume, on the documents case, and on February 23, 2026 she “granted a request from the president to keep under wraps the report,” the AP reported; Attorney General Pam Bondi had deemed it “an internal deliberative communication that is privileged and confidential and should not be released.” American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute are appealing. Smith later testified to Congress (Jack Smith Tells Senators He 'Will Not Be Silenced' by Trump's Threats to Prosecute Him, and That He Had Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt).