Special counsel Jack Smith resigns after submitting his Trump report
The two-volume report covers Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
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 that document can be made public in the days ahead.
The department disclosed Mr Smith’s departure in a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier.
The resignation, 10 days before Mr Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions against Mr Trump that were withdrawn following his White House win in November.
At issue now is the fate of a two-volume report that Mr Smith and his team had prepared about their twin investigations into Mr 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 had been 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 defence request to at least temporarily halt its release.
Two of Mr Trump’s co-defendants in that case, valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, had argued that the release of the report would be unfairly prejudicial, an argument that the Trump legal team joined.
The department responded by saying that it would withhold from public release the classified documents volume as long as criminal proceedings against Mr Nauta and Mr De Oliveira remain pending.
Though US District Judge Aileen Cannon had dismissed the case last July, a Smith team appeal of that decision related to the two co-defendants remained pending.
But prosecutors said they intended to proceed with the release of the election interference volume.
In an emergency motion late on Friday, they asked the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals to swiftly lift an injunction from Ms Cannon that had barred them from releasing any portion of the report.
They separately told Ms Cannon on Saturday that she had no authority to halt the release of the report, but she responded with an order directing prosecutors to file an additional brief by Sunday.
On Thursday night, the appeals court denied an emergency defence bid to block the release of the election interference report, which covers Mr Trump’s efforts before the Capitol riot on January 6 2021, to undo the results of the 2020 election.
But it left in place Ms Cannon’s injunction that said none of the findings could be released until three days after the matter was resolved by the appeals court.
The Justice Department told the appeals court in its emergency motion that Ms Cannon’s order was “plainly erroneous”.
“The Attorney General is the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice and is vested with the authority to supervise all officers and employees of the department,” the Justice Department said.
“The Attorney General thus has authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.”
Justice Department regulations call for special counsels to produce reports at the conclusion of their work, and it is customary for such documents to be made public no matter the subject.
William Barr, attorney general during Mr Trump’s first term, released a special counsel report examining Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.
Mr Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, has also released special counsel reports, including about Mr Biden’s handling of classified information before he became president.
