Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to talk to the press on the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on June 9, 2023, announcing the unsealing of the indictment against former US President Donald Trump.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office spent greater than $5.4 million throughout the 4 and a half months since he took over two criminal probes centered on former President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice said Friday.
Most of that sum, nearly $4.6 million, went toward staff salaries and advantages and paying for contractual services, including IT and “litigation/investigative support,” in keeping with a report posted by the DOJ.
Smith’s operation spent the rest of the cash on travel, rent, printing, supplies, acquisition of kit, in keeping with the statement of expenditures. The report covers the period from Nov. 18 through the top of March.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in mid-November to steer two criminal investigations. One probe, into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, has yielded an unprecedented federal criminal case against the previous president. Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case to 37 counts of crimes including willful retention of national defense information and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Smith’s other probe, into possibly illegal efforts to interfere with the transfer of power to President Joe Biden after the 2020 election, is ongoing.
The DOJ on Friday also released separate spending reports for 2 other special counsels, Robert Hur and John Durham.
Hur, who was tasked in mid-January with investigating classified documents discovered at Biden’s office and personal residence, has spent $615,962 over about three and a half months, according to the DOJ.
Durham, who was probing the origins of the DOJ’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign, spent greater than $1.1 million from last October through the top of March, the agency reported.
Durham had been appointed in October 2020. The sum of his five expenditure reports over that point period equals $7.7 million.
The special counsels’ activities are funded by the everlasting appropriation for independent counsels, the reports note.
The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service also incurred a combined $3.8 million in support of Smith’s probes, but that figure just isn’t included within the $5.4 million total since the agencies paid their very own respective costs. Smith’s spending report notes that the FBI and USMS will not be legally required to trace those expenditures.
