Special counsel Jack Smith has completed his work on two criminal investigations of President-elect Donald Trump and resigned Friday from the Justice Department.
Word of Smith’s departure came in a footnote to a court filing Justice Department officials submitted to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon Saturday afternoon, urging her not to extend a court order she issued last week temporarily blocking the release of the final report Smith submitted to department leaders on Tuesday.
Justice Department officials say Cannon’s order overstepped her authority and that she has no power to block Attorney General Merrick Garland from releasing Smith’s findings. Her ban on disclosure of Smith’s report currently runs through Monday.
Garland has said he plans to release publicly only the portion of Smith’s report that covers his investigation into Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election. The attorney general has said in court filings that he agreed with a recommendation from Smith to keep the other volume — which addresses the probe into Trump’s possession of a raft of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office in 2021 — under wraps due to prosecutors’ ongoing efforts to revive a criminal case against two Trump allies and former co-defendants. Instead, Garland intends only to show that report to a handful of members of Congress.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member