US Special Counsel Jack Smith has resigned from the Justice Department following his investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump. This expected move comes amid legal battles over how much of this document can be made public in the coming days.
The department announced Smith’s departure in a court filing Saturday, saying he resigned a day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal cases against Trump, which were withdrawn after Trump’s White House victory in November.
At issue now is the fate of a two-volume report that Smith and his team prepared on their two investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The Justice Department had been expected to release the document in the final days of the Biden administration, but the Trump-appointed judge presiding over the classified documents case granted a defense request to at least temporarily halt publication. Two of Trump’s co-defendants in the case, Trump aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, had argued that releasing the report would be unfairly damaging, an argument that Trump’s legal team agreed with connected.
The ministry responded by saying it would withhold publication of the extent of the secret documents while criminal cases against Nauta and De Oliveira were pending. Although U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case last July, an appeal by the Smith team of that decision remained pending in connection with the two co-defendants.
Newly revealed evidence from Donald Trump’s election conspiracy case shows an alleged plan to trick election officials into falsely declaring Trump the winner of the 2020 election.
However, prosecutors said they intended to move forward with releasing the election interference tape.
In an emergency filing late Friday, they asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to quickly lift an injunction from Cannon that had barred them from releasing portions of the report. They separately told Cannon on Saturday that she had no authority to stop the report’s release, but she responded with an order directing prosecutors to file an additional brief by Sunday.
The appeals court on Thursday evening rejected an emergency defense bid to block the release of the election interference report covering Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election before the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021. However, Cannon’s injunction remained in place, stating that the results could not be released until three days after the appeals court’s decision.
The Justice Department told the appeals court in its emergency motion that Cannon’s order was “clearly wrong.”
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“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 Justice Department said. “The Attorney General therefore has the authority to decide whether to publish an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.”
Justice Department regulations require special counsel to prepare reports after completing their work, and it is common for such documents to be made public regardless of the subject.
William Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, released a special counsel report investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible ties to the Trump campaign.
Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland has also released special reports, including on Biden’s handling of classified information before Biden became president.