Special counsel Jack Smith has stepped down from his position at the Justice Department, following the submission of his inquiry report regarding the actions of President-elect Donald Trump. This expected resignation occurs amidst legal debates concerning the extent of the report’s public disclosure in the forthcoming days.
The department publicized Smith’s departure in a legal document on Saturday, stating he left his role the previous day. This resignation arrives 10 days before Trump’s inauguration and follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful legal actions against Trump which were subsequently dropped after his victory in the White House in November.
The focus now shifts to the fate of a two-volume report that Smith and his team compiled. The report details their dual investigations into Trump’s attempts to reverse the 2020 election results and his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The Justice Department had plans to disclose the document publicly in the final days of the Biden administration. However, a Trump-appointed judge who oversaw the classified documents case approved a defense appeal to temporarily halt its release. Two of Trump’s co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, argued that the report’s release would be unjustly prejudicial, an argument supported by the Trump legal team.
In response, the department stated it would withhold the classified documents volume from public release as long as criminal proceedings against Nauta and De Oliveira were ongoing. Although District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case last July, an appeal from Smith’s team concerning the two co-defendants was still pending.
The prosecutors, however, said they planned to proceed with the release of the volume about election interference. They filed an emergency motion late Friday asking the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to swiftly remove an injunction from Cannon that prohibited them from releasing any portion of the report.
The appeals court denied an emergency defense request to block the release of the election interference report on Thursday night but maintained Cannon’s injunction that stated none of the findings could be released until three days after the matter was resolved by the appeals court.
The Justice Department described Cannon’s order as “plainly erroneous” in its emergency motion to the appeals court. They argued that the Attorney General, as the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice, has the authority to supervise all officers and employees of the Department and therefore has the authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.
It is typical for special counsels to produce reports at the conclusion of their work, and such documents are usually made public regardless of the subject. Previous Attorney Generals, including William Barr and Merrick Garland, have released special counsel reports during their tenures.
