Case dismissed against Trump in secret government documents affair

A US judge on Monday dismissed the case against former president Donald Trump concerning the retention of secret government documents.

Judge Aileen Cannon said her decision was based on doubts about the legality of the US Justice Department's appointment of the special investigator in charge of the case.

Trump - who survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday - said the decision was a "first step" that should be "followed quickly by the dismissal of all the witch hunts."

Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump called the various criminal cases brought against him an "election interference conspiracy against Joe Biden's political opponent."

Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, is a federal judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, based in Miami. Her ruling can be appealed.

The former president was indicted in the document affair last year, but the case stalled and had not been expected to begin before the US presidential election in November, which Trump is set to contest as the Republican Party nominee.

In the case, Trump was accused of unlawfully storing highly sensitive information from his term as president from 2017 to 2021.

In August 2022, federal investigators raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida and seized several sets of documents classified as top secret.

Trump was also accused of conspiring to obstruct the investigation.

He was alleged to have tried to use associates to make footage from surveillance cameras disappear and to have boxes of documents taken away.

He pleaded not guilty when the charges were presented in Miami last year.