Following Trump’s win against Vice President Kamala Harris, special counsel Jack Smith began efforts to dismiss the Jan. 6 criminal case in Washington, D.C., to which U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to dismiss it Monday afternoon. Additionally, an appellate court on Tuesday granted Smith’s request to drop his appeal against Trump in the classified documents criminal case.

When York, the Washington Examiner’s chief political correspondent, was asked if he believed these legal battles had any role in Trump’s victory, York pointed to how polling data “kept going up” with each legal pursuit made against the former president.

“And what was additionally interesting was, by the time I would say the third indictment, public interest in each successive event went down,” York noted on The Hugh Hewitt Show. “If you were hoping to bring Trump down through lawfare, you would certainly want the public to be interested and be outraged that these terrible things that Trump did you have exposed. And instead, with each successive indictment, the public’s reaction was kind of ‘ho hum, they’re going after him again.’”

York was also asked about the likelihood of Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, issuing an order to discover which federal employees were involved in the criminal cases against Trump and recommend their firing. York said “it might” happen. He also stressed that “you cannot have” a criminal charge hanging over a sitting president, suggesting the resurrection of charges in future prosecutions is unlikely.

“And it seems to me that it would be a good idea to make that clear: that these charges are dead. Completely, forever dead,” York said.

Ahead of Trump’s inauguration in 2025, Smith intends to finish his work and resign before the president-elect takes office, likely to get ahead of Trump’s promise to fire him within “two seconds” of being sworn in, according to sources close to Smith who spoke to the New York Times.

Many Republican lawmakers celebrated Smith filing the motions to end the cases against Trump, with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) writing on X that the lawfare against Trump was “always politically-motivated” and “MUST NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.” Trump lawyer Alina Habba also jokingly asked if Smith intends to reimburse taxpayers over his “bogus witch hunt” against the former president.

York also addressed Trump’s rapid Cabinet picks, assessing that they showcase how “he’s not messing around” and that “he’s in a hurry” to achieve as much as he can while in office.