Washington:
An appeals court on Tuesday granted a request from prosecutors to drop the case against newly-elected US President Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents.
Special Counsel Jack Smith had asked the court Monday to dismiss the case because of the Justice Department’s long-standing policy not to prosecute a sitting president.
A Trump-appointed district court judge in Florida threw out the documents case earlier this year, but Smith had appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court granted Smith’s request to dismiss the case without comment.
However, Smith continues to pursue the case against Trump’s two co-defendants, his valet, Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.
Trump, 78, was accused of removing troves of top-secret documents after leaving the White House at the end of his first term and obstructing efforts to retrieve them.
The former president was also accused by the special counsel of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden. A judge on Monday granted Smith’s request to drop the case.
The special counsel paused both federal cases this month after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
The former and new president also faces two state cases: in New York and Georgia.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to keep her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
Judge Juan Merchan postponed sentencing while he considers a request from Trump’s lawyers to overturn the conviction in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution.
Trump faces charges in Georgia over his efforts to undermine the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in power.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)