With D.C. case dismissed, Trump is no longer under federal indictment - The Boston Globe

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : Trump denied wrongdoing in every case and is appealing the New York conviction.
44% : That leaves open the possibility that prosecutors could again bring charges once Trump leaves office, though steep hurdles would remain.
44% : Once Trump won the election, Smith had few options to keep the two federal cases alive.
40% : But the Constitution has few limitations on presidential pardon powers, and legal experts said it's possible that once Trump is in office, he could try to do something that has never been tested before: preemptively pardon himself to foreclose the possibility of legal jeopardy in the future or get the Justice Department to dismiss the case.
38% : Since being elected, Trump has chosen several of his personal criminal defense lawyers in the cases to serve in top Justice Department positions in his administration.
37% : The two federal indictments of Trump came within months of him being indicted in New York on state charges of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment in 2016, and in Georgia on state charges of trying to block the election results in that state.
35% : The classified document investigation began in the spring of 2022, after months of disagreement between Trump and the National Archives and Records Administration over boxes of documents that followed Trump from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club.
34% : But if there is no movement in the appeal before Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20, it will be up to Trump's Justice Department to decide whether to drop the appeal or proceed.
31% : After Trump was indicted, the case was assigned to Cannon, a relatively inexperienced trial judge whom Trump nominated to the bench toward the end of his first term.
29% : The Washington Post reported Friday that Trump plans to fire the entire team that works with Smith, including career attorneys typically protected from political retribution, according to two individuals close to Trump's transition.
28% : Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, but his sentencing has been twice delayed since this summer.
28% : The prosecutions became a central focus of his presidential campaign, with Trump and his allies rallying supporters who believed he was being unfairly targeted.
28% : In the D.C. indictment, Trump faced four counts related to conspiring to obstruct the 2020 election results.
25% : Until Trump won the election, Chutkan had been preparing to consider what elements in the superseding indictment could be prosecuted under the expanded definition of presidential immunity.
24% : "Trump also responded on social media, saying the underlying cases were "empty and lawless" and should "never have been brought.
24% : One memo suggests that a future court could decide to pause the five-year statute of limitations on charging Trump with crimes for his post-2020 election conduct while he is back in office.
22% : "Smith first asked U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Monday to dismiss the charges against Trump for allegedly trying to block Joe Biden's 2020 victory, saying that he "stands fully behind" the allegations but that Justice Department guidelines made clear the case could not go forward.
21% : The Supreme Court decision pushed Smith to file a superseding indictment against Trump, keeping the same four charges but paring down the allegations.
19% : Smith asked the 11th Circuit to allow the appeal of that ruling to go forward by keeping in the case Trump's co-defendants, Carlos De Oliveira and Waltine "Walt" Nauta - who were accused along with Trump of trying to obstruct government efforts to retrieve the classified material.
19% : He plans to resign before Trump is president, preventing Trump from delivering on his promise to fire him, people familiar with his plans have said.
18% : Soon after, Smith lodged his request to drop Trump from his appeal of this summer's dismissal of the classified documents indictment, in which Trump had been accused of hoarding secret material and obstructing government efforts to retrieve it.
1% : They asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021 to discuss his unfounded claims of widespread election fraud; his pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results; and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers and advisers about fake electors and sending electors back to the states, The Post has reported.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.