Attorney General Garland names special counsel Jack Smith

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday named former federal prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel for 2 ongoing criminal investigations by the Department of Justice of former President Donald Trump.

Smith’s appointment got here three days after Trump, a Republican, announced plans to run for president in 2024.

Trump’s move directly led to Garland’s decison to appoint a special counsel, who will recommend whether criminal charges ought to be lodged against the ex-president.

The attorney general himself was appointed by Biden, a Democrat who defeated Trump in his 2020 re-election bid. Biden could again face Trump again within the 2024 election, although the president has not yet made a final decision on becoming a candidate.

The primary investigation that Smith will begin immediately handling is looking into whether any person, including Trump, unlawfully interfered with the transfer of presidential power following the 2020 election, or the certification of the Electoral College vote in President Joe Biden’s favor on Jan. 6, 2021.

That day, a mob of Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol, disrupting the certification of the Electoral College vote.

The opposite DOJ probe that Smith will oversee is targeted on whether Trump broke the law and obstructed justice in connection along with his removal of a whole lot of documents from the White House, which were shipped to his residence at Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

“Mr. Smith is the precise alternative to finish these matters in an even-handed and urgent matter,” Garland said.

Smith is not going to be chargeable for criminal cases and probes of people who were physically present on the Capitol through the Jan. 6 riot. The office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia will proceed prosecuting those cases.

Along with previously serving as a profession DOJ prosecutor, Smith most recently was serving as chief prosecutor for the special court within the Hague, within the Netherlands. In that post, which he has resigned to take the special counsel post, he investigated war crimes in Kosovo.

Smith also served with the International Criminal Court, supervising war crimes probes, as chief within the DOJ’s public integrity section, as a senior prosecutor at a U.S. Attorney’s office in Tennessee, a prosecutor within the Brooklyn, Latest York, U.S. Attorney’s office. He began his profession as a prosecutor within the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Garland revealed the appointment during a public statement from the DOJ.

“The Department of Justice has long recognized that in certain extraordinary cases it’s in the general public interest to appoint a special prosecutor to independently manage an investigation and prosecution,” Garland said.

“Based on recent developments, including the previous president’s announcement that he’s a candidate for president in the subsequent election and the sitting president’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I even have concluded that it’s in the general public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland said.    

The attorney general said that he was “confident” that the appointment “is not going to slow the completion of those investigations.”

“I’ll be certain that the Special Counsel receives the resources to conduct this work quickly and completely,” Garland said.

A campaign spokesman for Trump, in an announcement, said, “This can be a totally expected political stunt by a feckless, politicized, weaponized Biden Department of Justice.”

Trump himself later told FoxNews.com, I even have been going through this for six years — for six years I even have been going through this, and I’m not going to undergo it anymore.

“And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this.”

“I even have been proven innocent for six years on every little thing — from fake impeachments to Mueller who found no collusion, and now I even have to do it more?” Trump said. “It shouldn’t be acceptable. It’s so unfair. It’s so political.”

Smith in his own statement said, “I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that will result from them, independently and in one of the best traditions of the Department of Justice.”

“The pace of the investigations is not going to pause or flag under my watch,” Smith said. “I’ll exercise independent judgement and can move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever consequence the facts and the law dictate.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre later told reporters, “We weren’t given advance notice” of Smith’s appointment.

Barbara McQuade, an NBC News legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, in a Time magazine article on Thursday argued against the thought of a special counsel being appointed within the Trump probes, saying it could potentially delay prosecution so long that he would avoid being held accountable for potential crimes.

“Practical consideration also militate against appointing a special counsel: time,” McQuade wrote.

“Appointing a recent lawyer to take over the investigation will create delay. A recent lawyer would wish to rent his own staff, all of whom would wish time to get in control,” she wrote.

“If Trump is searching for to regain the Oval Office, then DOJ must complete not only the investigations, however the trials before Jan. 20, 2025. That is when a newly sworn in President Trump could take the last word act of partisanship in prosecution — and pardon himself.”