US special prosecutor Jack Smith has resigned from the Justice Department after releasing his investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump, an expected move that comes amid legal wrangling over how much of the document can be released in the coming days.
The department disclosed Smith’s departure in a court filing Saturday, saying he resigned a day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, followed the end of two failed criminal prosecutions against Trump that were dropped after Trump won the White House in November.
Now at stake is the fate of a two-volume report Smith and his team prepared on their twin 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 was expected to release the document in the final days of the Biden administration, but a Trump-appointed judge presiding over the classified documents case granted a defense request to at least temporarily halt its release. Two of Trump’s co-defendants in the case, Trump’s valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, argued that releasing the report would be unfairly prejudicial, an argument joined by Trump’s legal team.
The department responded by saying it would withhold public release of the volume of classified documents while the criminal case against Nauta and De Oliveira is pending. Although U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case last July, Smith’s team’s appeal of that decision, which involved two co-defendants, remains pending.
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But prosecutors said they intend to press ahead with the release of the tome on election meddling.
In an emergency motion late Friday, they asked the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to quickly lift Cannon’s injunction barring them from releasing any part of the report. They separately told Cannon on Saturday that she did not have the authority to stop the release of the report, but she responded with an order ordering prosecutors to file an additional brief by Sunday.
An appeals court on Thursday night rejected an emergency defense to block the release of the election interference report, which covered Trump’s efforts before the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election. the findings cannot be published until three days after the appellate court decides the matter.
The Justice Department told the appeals court in its emergency motion that Cannon’s order was “plainly erroneous.”
“The Attorney General is the head of the Ministry of Justice, who is confirmed by the Senate and is authorized to supervise all officials and employees of that department,” the Ministry of Justice announced. “The Attorney General therefore has the authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.”
Justice Department regulations require special counsel to prepare reports upon completion of their work, and it is customary for such documents to be released regardless of the subject matter.
William Barr, the attorney general during Trump’s first term, released a special counsel’s report examining Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.
Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, also released special prosecutors’ reports, including Biden’s handling of classified information before Biden became president.
