Dear Reader,

The first mission of any organization is to protect the mission. When you are the attorney general of the United States, corny as it may sound, that mission is justice.

Last week, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the indictment charging Donald Trump in the classified documents case, finding that the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional. The dismissal presented Merrick Garland with a decision — dump the special counsel and reassign the case to a Department of Justice lawyer, or stay the course and file an appeal. But the quickest path to trial may not be the one that best preserves important institutional interests of justice.

Judge Cannon’s opinion was most certainly an outlier, rejecting the prior decisions of every other court to speak to the issue, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Under Cannon’s view, the appointments of Robert Mueller to probe Russian election interference and Robert Hur to investigate Joe Biden must likewise be illegal, though her decision is not binding on any other court. She found that Garland’s appointment of Smith without Senate confirmation was invalid under the Constitution’s appointments clause. Judge Cannon reached that conclusion despite a federal statute that says, “The Attorney General may from time to time make such provisions as he considers appropriate authorizing the performance by any other officer, employee, or agency of the Department of Justice of any function of the Attorney General.” So much for textualism.