The US special prosecutor investigating Trump resigned after submitting a report
US special prosecutor Jack Smith has resigned from the Department of Justice after submitting an investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump.
The department announced Smith’s departure in a court filing Saturday, saying he had resigned the day before. The resignation, 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, follows the conclusion of two failed criminal prosecutions against Trump that were dropped after Trump won the White House in November.
At issue now is the fate of a two-volume report by Smith and his team into twin investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The Justice Department was expected to make the document public in the final days of the Biden administration, but a Trump-appointed judge presiding over the classified documents case granted a defense request to halt its release, at least temporarily. Two of Trump’s co-defendants in the case, Trump aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, argued that release of the report would be unfairly prejudicial, joined by Trump’s legal team.
The department responded by saying it would refuse to release the volume of classified documents to the public as long as the criminal case against Nauta and De Oliveira is pending. Although U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case last July, an appeal by Smith’s team against the two defendants is still pending.
Newly unearthed evidence from the Donald Trump election conspiracy case reveals an alleged plot to force election officials to declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election.
However, the prosecutors said that they intend to proceed with the release of the scope of interference in the election.
In an emergency appeal late Friday, they asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to quickly overturn an order barring Cannon from publishing any part of the report. They separately told Cannon on Saturday that he did not have the authority to stop the release of the report, but he responded with an order ordering prosecutors to provide more information by Sunday.
An appeals court on Thursday night rejected Trump’s bid for emergency protections to block the release of an election-interference report covering his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election ahead of a Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. But he left in place Cannon’s order, which said none of the findings could be released until three days after the case was decided by the appeals court.
In an emergency appeals court filing, the Justice Department said Cannon’s order was “clearly erroneous.”
“The Attorney General is the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice and has the authority to supervise all officers and employees of the department,” the Department of Justice said. “Thus, the attorney general has the power to decide whether or not to publish the investigative report prepared by his subordinates.”
Justice Department rules require special counsel to report at the end of their work, and it is customary for such documents to be made public, regardless of the subject matter.
William Barr, the attorney general in Trump’s first term, released the special counsel’s report investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.
Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general, also released special counsel reports, including one about Biden’s handling of classified information before he became president.
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