Attorneys for Donald Trump on Monday continued pushing the mendacious claim that the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the ex-president’s prosecution on federal charges of illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office, was invalid.
Appearing in the Alto Lee Adams Sr. U.S. Courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, defense co-counsel Emil Bove—fresh off a loss for Trump in New York State Court, where the presumptive GOP presidential nominee was convicted by a jury of 34 felony counts of falsification of business records—argued to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that the Department of Justice’s funding of Smith’s office is a violation of the Constitution’s appropriations clause.
In a court filing furthering its attempts to get the case thrown out entirely, Trump’s team said that Smith’s budget as special counsel comes not from the DOJ budget, but from indefinite appropriations “reserved for ‘independent counsels.’”
