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(LifeSiteNews) — On Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the federal prosecution of former President and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump over his retention of classified documents at his personal residence, based on an argument recently highlighted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that the Constitution did not authorize the investigator who brought the charges in the first place.

In August 2022, the FBI conducted a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence for the documents, which Special Counsel Jack Smith maintains that Trump unlawfully retained and shared with others long after his presidential authority to declassify material lapsed. Trump and his allies vigorously denied that he mishandled classified material and panned the prosecution as politically motivated in light of far milder treatment for similar scandals involving Democrats, such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, and current President Joe Biden.

The case has been seen by many as the most serious of the multiple ongoing prosecutions of Trump across the nation, which suffered a setback early this month when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that presidents have a degree of immunity from prosecution for acts related to their official duties and so prosecutors and judges had to reevaluate which actions at issue did and did not qualify.

Thomas, the Court’s most conservative member, wrote a concurring opinion suggesting that the Constitution of the United States never gave U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland the authority to appoint Smith to investigate Trump in the first place. While that opinion was not binding, now Cannon has tossed the documents prosecution on the same grounds, Law & Crime reports.

“Both the Appointments and Appropriations challenges as framed in the Motion raise the following threshold question: is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution? After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no,” she wrote. “None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment— 28 U.S.C. §§ 509, 510, 515, 533—gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith. Nor do the Special Counsel’s strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority persuade otherwise.”

The former president was quick to celebrate the ruling via his personal social network, Truth Social.

“As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts — The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia ‘Perfect’ Phone Call charges,” he said. “The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”

It remains to be seen whether Cannon’s decision will be appealed, or if the prosecution will be revived by a higher court, but at the very least it further guarantees that no theoretical conviction will occur before the November election, strengthening odds the case collapses entirely if Trump becomes president again.

“This was the three-point shot for Trump,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. “The easier basket was the D.C. case despite a far more favorable judge for Jack Smith. That case is inundated with presumptively privileged evidence and challenged charges […] Of all of the cases that Trump would want to see dismissed from the Trump perspective, this is the one.”

The good news for Trump follows his narrow survival of an attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania campaign rally over the weekend, and Democrat panic over Biden’s mental health, physical stamina, and political viability unleashed by a disastrous presidential debate performance late last month.

Polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH indicate a slim popular-vote lead for Trump since the debate, and more importantly leads in swing states translating to an Electoral College advantage over Biden. 

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