Two weeks after the Department of Justice, now under new leadership following Donald Trump’s reelection, moved to dismiss their appeal of Trump’s classified documents case, a circuit court formally dismissed the appeal of a case that once accused the president of mishandling some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
The dismissal marks the end of a series of federal criminal cases that once dogged Trump’s political future.
“Appellant’s ‘Unopposed Motion to Dismiss Appeal’ is GRANTED. This appeal is DISMISSED,” said the one-page order issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
Recently appointed Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Hayden O’Bryne moved to dismiss the appeal against Trump’s former co-defendants on Jan. 29.
Trump previously faced 40 criminal counts — including violations of nine separate federal laws — for allegedly holding on to classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021 and thwarting investigators’ efforts to retrieve the documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate. He pleaded not guilty to all charges in 2023.
Trump, along with longtime aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago staffer Carlos De Oliveira, pleaded not guilty in a superseding indictment to allegedly attempting to delete surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Last summer, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — who Trump appointed to the bench during his first term — dismissed the indictments against Trump, bucking decades of legal precedent by finding that special counsel Jack Smith had been unconstitutionally appointed.
Smith appealed Cannon’s decision but was ultimately forced to drop the appeal against Trump after Trump was reelected in November, due to a longstanding Department of Justice policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.
After O’Bryne moved to dismiss the appeal against Nauta and De Oliveira last month, Tuesday’s dismissal closes the book on the case.
