President-elect Donald Trump responded Monday to special counsel Jack Smith's decision to dismiss the two felony cases against him.
“These cases, like all the others I have had to endure, are empty and lawless and should never have been brought,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
“It was a political hijacking and a low point in our country's history that something like this could have happened, and yet I persevered, against all odds, and WON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump added.
MORE: Special Counsel Jack Smith Seeks to Drop Election to Trump, Documents Cases Citing 'categorical' DOJ Policy
Vice President-elect JD Vance said Trump “could have spent the rest of his life in prison” if the outcome of the 2024 race had been different.
“If Donald J. Trump had lost an election, he could very well have spent the rest of his life in prison,” Vance wrote on X. “These prosecutions were always political. Now is the time to make sure what happened to President Trump never happens. back in this country.”
Smith, in subsequent lawsuits, cited the Justice Department's “categorical” policy, which he said prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president, as the reason for his request to drop the federal election interference case and the classified documents case.
Later Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan dismissed the case against the president-elect in the federal election.
PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump attends a press conference to deliver 'Trump Will Fix It' remarks, at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, October 29, 2024. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
Trump pleaded not guilty to four charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, filed by Smith in connection with Trump's alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. The case has been plagued by delays and developments, including a Supreme Court ruling that a president is entitled to some immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions while in office.
Trump also pleaded not guilty to 40 charges related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House. The case was dismissed by a federal judge in Florida in July, although Smith appealed the decision.
During his presidential campaign, Trump told his supporters that he was their “retaliation” and that he was “being sued for you.”
MORE: Trump's trials: Prosecutors end federal cases as state cases can be stayed
Steven Cheung, the new White House communications director, called Smith's decision a “major victory for the rule of law” and said Americans want Trump to end the “weaponization of our justice system.”
Some Trump allies on Capitol Hill also celebrated the development.
“A huge victory for America, President Trump, and the fight against the weaponization of the justice system,” House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X. “This has ALWAYS been about politics and not the law.”
However, California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff said the Justice Department and the courts “have failed to uphold the principle that no one is above the law.”
Schiff served on the House of Representatives' Jan. 6 committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol for more than a year. The panel, which voted to recommend charges against Trump, identified Trump and his actions after the 2020 election as the “central cause” of what happened on January 6, 2021.
“DOJ by failing to promptly investigate the events of January 6, and the courts by deliberately delaying the progress of the case and providing immunity,” Schiff wrote on X. “The public deserved better.”
Donald Trump responds to Jack Smith's move to dismiss felony cases originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
