U.S. special counsel Jack Smith has resigned from the Justice Department after submitting his investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump, an expected move that comes amid legal wrangling over how much of the document can be made public in the future.
The department revealed Smith’s departure in a court filing Saturday, saying he had resigned a day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal charges against Trump that were withdrawn after Trump’s White House victory in November.
At stake now is the fate of a two-volume report that Smith and his team had prepared on their dual investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar -a-Lago.
The Justice Department was expected to make the document public in the final days of the Biden administration, but the Trump-appointed judge who presided over the classified documents case granted a defense request to to at least temporarily suspend its publication. Two of Trump’s co-defendants in the case, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, had argued that releasing the report would be unfairly prejudicial, an argument the legal team of Trump joined.
The ministry responded by stating that it would not make public the volume of classified documents while the criminal proceedings against Nauta and De Oliveira remained ongoing. Although U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case last July, the Smith team’s appeal of that decision regarding the two co-defendants was still pending.
Newly revealed evidence in Donald Trump’s election conspiracy case shows an alleged plan to pressure election officials into falsely declaring Trump the winner of the 2020 election.
But prosecutors said they intend to proceed with publishing the tome on election interference.
In an emergency motion Friday evening, they asked the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to quickly lift an injunction from Cannon that had barred them from releasing any part of the report. They separately told Cannon on Saturday that she did not have the authority to stop the report’s release, but she responded by ordering prosecutors to file a supplemental brief by Sunday.
The appeals court late Thursday rejected an emergency defense attempt to block the release of the election interference report, which covers Trump’s efforts before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, to overturn the 2020 election results. But it left in place Cannon’s injunction that none of the findings could be released until three days after the case was resolved by the appeals court.
The Justice Department told the appeals court in its emergency motion that Cannon’s order was “patently erroneous.”
“The Attorney General is the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice and is vested with authority to supervise all officers and employees of the Department,” the Justice Department said. “The attorney general therefore has the power to decide whether or not to disclose an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.”
Justice Department regulations require special advocates to produce reports upon completion of their work, and it is customary for these documents to be made public, regardless of the subject.
William Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, released a special counsel report examining Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.
Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland also released reports from special advisers, including on Biden’s handling of classified information before Biden became president.
