Jack Smith investigated the US president-elect’s efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, as well as the alleged mishandling of secret documents
Special Counsel Jack Smith resigned from the Justice Department effective Friday, according to a court filing.
The lawsuit comes amid a legal fight to prevent Attorney General Merrick Garland from releasing the prosecutor’s report of his investigations into then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and alleged mishandling of confidential documents afterward. of Trump leaving office.
Smith delivered his two-volume final report to the attorney general on Tuesday. Garland indicated he would not release the portion of the report relating to the investigation into confidential documents, but believes it should be made public eventually.
Smith’s office has been in the process of closing for weeks, and his dismissal before Trump’s inauguration was not unexpected. In addition to finalizing its report and sending it to the Attorney General, Smith’s team also turned over an ongoing appeal about the powers of the special counsel’s office to other Justice Department lawyers and dropped the two federal criminal cases against Trump due to his return to the presidency.
The attorney general also told congressional committee leaders that he intends to give them confidential access to Smith’s tome on classified documents – making this weekend and next week a crucial window for the attorney general’s transparency intentions. General Merrick Garland.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is fighting in court with Trump and his former co-defendants over whether Smith’s report can be made public on Jan. 20, the date of the inauguration. Trump is planning to nominate some members of his defense team, who argued in court against publication, to high-level positions at the Justice Department.
On Friday, an appeals court rejected a request from Trump and his allies to keep the report secret. The Justice Department has since appealed Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to temporarily suspend publication of the report, and the former defendants have asked her to extend that suspension, which expires Sunday night.
Given the current state of the legal fight, the Justice Department could release the first volume of Smith’s report to the public on Sunday or Monday. Cannon, however, asked the Justice Department for more information by Sunday morning about what is in Volume 1 and whether any of it is related to the classified documents case.
Smith was appointed by Garland to take over the investigation into the documents and election subversion in November 2022, after Trump announced his re-election campaign. A former federal prosecutor, Smith had most recently served as a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague.
Smith brought charges against Trump in both investigations in 2023, but both cases had legal setbacks, and with voters’ decision to return Trump to the White House, the president-elect was dismissed from the cases.
