Saturday, 23 November 2024

Special Counsel Jack Smith Seeks Exit Before President Trump Takes Office

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According to reports, President Trump will not have the opportunity to fire special counsel Jack Smith and his team when he takes office in January.

Smith intends to file his report and resign before Trump takes office.

The report follows Smith moving to pause his office’s outstanding federal criminal cases against Trump and vacate all remaining deadlines.

The Justice Department has a longstanding policy of not to charge or prosecute a sitting president with a crime.

Fox News reports:

Smith on Friday filed a motion to vacate all deadlines in the 2020 election interference case against Trump in Washington, D.C., a widely expected move, but one that stops short of dropping the case against him completely. He said Friday that his team plans to give an updated report on the official status of the case against Trump on Dec. 2.

Smith is required under DOJ regulations to submit a report of his findings and an explanation of the charges the prosecutor considered and ultimately filed – even though neither case made it to trial.

Under a crunched timeline, it is unclear if Attorney General Merrick Garland would make that report public before the end of President Biden’s term or defer to the incoming Trump administration, according to the Times.

Sources close to the matter told the Times that Smith has no intention of dragging his feet, and has informed career prosecutors and FBI agents on his team not directly involved in preparing the report that they can plan their exits in the coming weeks.

In Friday’s filing, Smith said he needed a month “to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”

Trump previously said he would immediately fire Smith if he won re-election.

“It’s so easy — I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said, according to NBC News.

WATCH:

Per NBC News:

Before Trump’s re-election last week, Smith and his team had continued moving forward in their election interference case against Trump. After Trump’s victory, however, a federal judge overseeing the case agreed to give the special counsel’s office until Dec. 2 to decide how to proceed.

The Justice Department indicted Trump last year for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. But Smith’s case was hampered early on by appeals from Trump’s legal team and then in July of this year by the Supreme Court’s ruling that he has immunity for some acts he took as president. In August, Smith’s team re-tooled the indictment — stripping it of certain evidence the high court said was off limits and a federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment in the case.

The Justice Department had also charged Trump in Florida with allegedly hoarding classified documents after he left office and then refusing to give them back. But a federal judge dismissed the case in July, saying Smith’s appointment was illegal. That case remains on appeal.

When the former president was first indicted, Smith said he would move quickly to trial, but Trump’s legal team successfully sought to delay in both cases while then-candidate Trump routinely lambasted Smith at his rallies and online.


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