WASHINGTON  — Special counsel Jack Smith asked a federal judge on Monday to dismiss the case accusing President-elect Donald Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, citing longstanding Justice Department policy shielding presidents from prosecution while in office.

The move announced in court papers marks the end of the Justice Department’s landmark effort to hold Trump accountable for what prosecutors called a criminal conspiracy to cling to power in the run-up to his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Justice Department prosecutors, citing longstanding department guidance that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted, said the department’s position is that “the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”

“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind,” the prosecutors wrote in Monday’s court filing.

The decision was expected after Smith’s team began assessing how to wind down both the 2020 election interference case and the separate classified documents case in the wake of Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. The Justice Department believes Trump can no longer be tried in accordance with longstanding policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.

Trump has cast both cases as politically motivated, and had vowed to fire Smith as soon as he takes office in January.

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The 2020 election case brought last year was once seen as one of the most serious legal threats facing the Republican as he vied to reclaim the White House. But it quickly stalled amid legal fighting over Trump’s sweeping claims of immunity from prosecution for acts he took while in the White House.

The U.S. Supreme Court in July ruled for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, and sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to determine which allegations in the indictment, if any, could proceed to trial.

The case was just beginning to pick up steam again in the trial court in the weeks leading up to this year’s election. Smith’s team in October filed a lengthy brief laying out new evidence they planned to use against him at trial, accusing him of using “resorting to crimes” in an increasingly desperate effort to overturn the will of voters after he lost to President Joe Biden.

WASHINGTON  — President Joe Biden kicked off his final holiday season at the White House on Monday by issuing the traditional reprieve to two turkeys who will bypass the Thanksgiving table to live out their days in southern Minnesota.

The 82-year-old president welcomed 2,500 guests to the South Lawn under sunny skies as he cracked jokes about the fates of “Peach” and “Blossom” and sounded wistful tones about the last weeks of his presidency after a half-century in Washington power circles.

“It’s been the honor of my life. I’m forever grateful,” Biden said, taking note of his impending departure on Jan. 20, 2025. That’s when power will transfer to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, the man that Biden defeated four years ago and was battling again until he was pressured to bow out of the race amid concerns about his age and viability.

Until Inauguration Day, the president and first lady Jill Biden will continue a busy run of festivities that will double as their long goodbye. The White House schedule in December is replete with holiday parties for various constituencies, from West Wing staff to members of Congress and the White House press corps.

Biden relished the brief ceremony with the pardoned turkeys, named for the official flower of the president’s home state of Delaware.

“The peach pie in my state is one of my favorites,” he said during remarks that were occasionally interrupted by Peach gobbling atop the table to Biden’s right. “Peach is making a last-minute plea,” Biden said at one point, drawing laughter from an overflow crowd that included Cabinet members, White House staff and their families, and students from 4H programs and Future Farmers of America chapters.

Biden introduced Peach as a bird who “lives by the motto, ‘Keep calm and gobble on.’” Blossom, the president said, has a different motto: “No fowl play. Just Minnesota nice.”

Peach and Blossom came from the farm of John Zimmerman, near the southern Minnesota city of Northfield. Zimmerman, who has raised about 4 million turkeys, is president of the National Turkey Federation, the group that has gifted U.S. presidents Thanksgiving turkeys since the Truman administration after World War II. President Harry Truman, however, preferred to eat the birds. Official pardon ceremonies did not become an annual White House tradition until the administration of President George H.W. Bush in 1989.

With their presidential reprieve, Peach and Blossom will live out their days at Farmamerica, an agriculture interpretative center near Waseca in southern Minnesota. The center’s aim is to promote agriculture and educate future farmers and others about agriculture in America.

Later Monday, first lady Jill Biden will receive delivery of the official White House Christmas tree that will be on display in the Blue Room. Then the Bidens will travel to New York City for an evening “Friendsgiving” event at a Coast Guard station on Staten Island.

Biden began his valedictory calendar Friday night with a gala for hundreds of his friends, supporters and staff members who gathered in a pavilion erected on the South Lawn, with a view out to the Lincoln Memorial.

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Cabinet secretaries, Democratic donors and his longest-serving staff members came together to hear from the president and pay tribute, with no evidence that Biden was effectively forced from the Democratic ticket this summer and watched Vice President Kamala Harris suffer defeat on Nov. 5.

“I’m so proud that we’ve done all of this with a deep belief in the core values of America,” said Biden, sporting a tuxedo for the black-tie event. Setting aside his criticisms of Trump as a fundamental threat to democracy, Biden added his characteristic national cheerleading: “I fully believe that America is better positioned to lead the world today than at any point in my 50 years of public service.”

The first lady toasted her husband with a nod to his 2020 campaign promise to “restore the soul of the nation,” in Trump’s aftermath. With the results on Election Day, however, Biden’s four years now become sandwiched in the middle of an era dominated by Trump’s presence on the national stage and in the White House.

Even as the first couple avoided the context surrounding the president’s coming exit, those political realities were nonetheless apparent, as younger Democrats like Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Biden’s Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg not only raised their glasses to the president but held forth with many attendees who could remain in the party’s power circles in the 2028 election cycle and beyond.

Associated Press reporters Darlene Superville in Washington and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE

NEW YORK (AP) — When Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. circled up aboard the president-elect’s plane over some McDonalds burgers and fries recently, Donald Trump Jr. was seated in the center of that power foursome.

The central spot occupied by Trump’s eldest son, as captured in a photo widely shared online, reflects how Trump Jr. has become a prominent player in his father’s political orbit and a potential heir to his Make America Great Again movement.

For the son of a president-elect, Trump has already had an outsized impact on the next White House. He lobbied hard for the former president to choose his good friend, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, to be his running mate.

“I exerted 10,000% of my political capital,” Trump Jr. said of his effort in an interview with Tucker Carlson on the night of the election. “I may get a favor from my father in like, 2076. I used it all.”

FILE – Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump hugs Donald Trump Jr., at a campaign rally at PPG Paints Arena, Nov. 4, 2024, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Matt Freed, File)

As an honorary chair of the Republican president-elect’s transition team, Trump Jr. is part of a core group of people deciding who will fill top jobs in the next White House, and his imprint is clear.

Trump Jr. pushed in particular for roles for former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, whom the president-elect has chosen to be director of national intelligence, and Kennedy, who is in line to lead Health and Human Services.

Another close ally, Sergio Gor, will be running the personnel office. He and Trump Jr. run a publishing company, Winning Team Publishing, which has published two of the former president’s books.

The younger Trump has said he has no plans to join his father’s administration in the way his younger sister Ivanka Trump did during the first Trump term. His brother Eric is also an honorary chair of the transition but hasn’t been as much of a political player. Eric’s wife Lara has been more involved, serving as co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

Trump Jr. is expected to continue to be a vocal supporter of his father and his agenda and has made it clear he wants to be an influential voice from the outside, according to a person familiar with his thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

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The president-elect’s style — brash, indelicate and pugilistic — is distilled in his son. Donald Trump Jr. often takes a more aggressive tack than his father, in his calls for disrupting government as usual, in the way he dives into the culture wars with gusto and in his enthusiasm for trolling.

“He’s probably the best embodiment of the take-no-crap attitude of the Republican Party,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican political strategist.

Trump Jr.’s attitude and the way he communicates don’t make him sound like a regular political figure, Jennings said, and that’s part of the appeal.

“I think that’s one thing about the Trumps that is probably broadly true but certainly for him: They just don’t participate in the normal political pablum that sort of pre-Trump politicians were schooled in or trained to do.”

The 46-year-old is fluent in the online world of conservative politics and attuned to cultural issues that catch on with the MAGA faithful.

The posts on Trump’s X account, where he has more than 13 million followers, are often peppered with exclamation points and emojis. On Instagram, he is a prolific poster of conservative memes.

He flexes between interviews on established media outlets like Fox News and an array of podcasts influential among young conservatives, and he hosts his own twice a week, “Triggered With Don Jr.” During the campaign, he pushed for the former president to make appearances on podcasts as part of an effort to reach young men, including the popular Joe Rogan podcast.

FILE – Michael Boulos and his wife Tiffany Trump, Lara Trump, Eric Trump and Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump listen as Donald Trump Jr., speaks at a campaign rally at Van Andel Arena, Nov. 5, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

Trump Jr.’s aggressive style has particular appeal with younger men.

“I think that’s one of the reasons a lot of these young men like it because that’s how they talk,” Jennings said.

Trump Jr. has said he has no plans to run for office himself, but he’s been working to cultivate the next generation of his father’s movement, boosting like-minded, communication-savvy Republicans.

Beyond his political activity, the father of five also serves as executive vice president at the Trump organization’s main family business, has launched a new crypto platform and recently announced he’s joining a venture capital firm that invests in conservative-focused businesses.

In an earlier time, Trump Jr. appeared with his father on “The Apprentice,” the reality show that helped propel the billionaire’s first presidential campaign. When Donald Trump launched his White House bid in 2015 and faced skepticism from swaths of the Republican Party, Trump Jr.’s outreach helped his father win more support, especially among conservatives who saw someone who espoused their views and as an avid hunter and fisherman who is a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

He’s been increasingly visible in Republican politics since then, campaigning not just for his father but for like-minded candidates. He was a backer of Vance in his 2022 Ohio Senate race, nudging his father to do the same, and this year threw his support heavily behind successful Republican Senate candidates Jim Banks in Indiana, Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Tim Sheehy in Montana.

Trump Jr. helped broker a relationship with Kennedy as the Democrat-turned-independent suspended his presidential campaign, working to bring him into the MAGA fold and endorse his father. He floated the idea of Kennedy joining the administration early, saying in an interview with conservative host Glenn Beck that “I loved the idea,” of Kennedy joining a Trump White House.

“I love the idea of giving him some sort of role in some sort of major three-letter entity or whatever it may be and let him blow it up,” Trump Jr. said, a reference to the many initials for government agencies.

The two hit it off, and Trump Jr., an avid outdoorsman, shared images on social media in October of a day he spent with Kennedy enjoying the latter’s favored hobby: falconry.

The choice of anti-vaccine activist Kennedy to run the nation’s public health agencies is sure to draw tough scrutiny during confirmation proceedings in the Senate, even with a Republican majority,

Trump Jr., in a recent interview on Fox News, acknowledged some of his father’s choices will face pushback.

“They are going to be actual disrupters,” he said. “That’s what the American people want.”