CNN’s Elie Honig Lays Out Why Trump’s Legal Cases Will Not Return After He Leave Office In 4 Years

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said Tuesday that the dismissed legal cases against President-elect Donald Trump will not return once he leaves office in January 2029.

Judge Tanya Chutkan granted Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request Monday to dismiss the election subversion case he brought against President-elect Donald Trump to align with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) precedent of not prosecuting a sitting president. Honig said while the case was dismissed without prejudice, there are many strategies the Trump administration can adopt in order to ensure the case is never revived.

“Yes, technically the cases were dismissed without prejudice, which means technically someone could come back in 4 years and reinstitute these charges. But that’s correct in the same sense that the New York Jets could technically make it to the Super Bowl this year,” Honig said. “It’s not mathematically eliminated. That’s not gonna happen for a lot of reasons. First of all, four years from now is an eternity. Whoever the next president is in 2029, the next attorney general is gonna have no appetite in bringing this case back and you’re right, Jim [Acosta], there are moves Donald Trump’s DOJ could make. They can go back to the court and say ‘we want to switch this from without prejudice to with prejudice’ meaning it cannot be brought back. Who knows, Donald Trump may try to issue himself a pardon, something we’ve never seen before.”

“So, I wouldn’t hold out any expectation that this case ever gets charged in 2029,” Honig continued.

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Smith charged Trump in August 2023 with four counts relating to allegations that he engaged in conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election results on January 6, 2021. The now-president-elect’s legal team requested the case be dismissed on the grounds that a president should be granted “absolute immunity” for actions taken during their presidency, which the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to deliberate.

The Supreme Court ruled in a July decision that presidents are “entitled to immunity” for “official acts” taken while in office, leading Smith to issue a trimmed down superseding indictment in an attempt to argue that Trump acted outside of his official duties by attempting “to leverage the Justice Department.”

Smith further charged Trump in June 2023 with over 30 counts for the alleged unlawful storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, which had been dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon in July as she argued that Smith’s appointment is unlawful.

The special counsel engaged in “active talks” with the DOJ about dismissing both of his cases against Trump immediately following his election victory. He requested that Judge Tanya Chutkan pause all deadlines regarding the election interference case to allow prosecutors to evaluate their next steps, which had been granted.