President-elect Donald Trump reportedly has a plan in place to fire the entire team of Special Counsel Jack Smith, including the prosecutor himself, and investigate the results of the previous election in which he was defeated by President Joe Biden.
The president-elect plans to even get rid of the career attorneys that are typically protected from political retribution, The Washington post reported.
Trump “wants to clean out ‘the bad guys, the people who went after me,’” a source close to the president-elect said.
The special prosecutor’s team consists of dozens of attorneys, FBI agents and staff who were likely assigned to the cases and did not choose to be on his team, the report said.
“President Trump campaigned on firing rogue bureaucrats who have engaged in the illegal weaponization of our American justice system, and the American people can expect he will deliver on that promise,” Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary for the president-elect, said to The Post.“House Republicans previously told Justice Department officials that anyone who had worked on the Trump cases with Smith should preserve all of their communications in a move that signaled that Smith, among others, could be targeted by congressional investigators,” the report said.
“Trump also apparently plans to use the DOJ to investigate the 2020 election in which he lost to President Joe Biden but has continued to claim that his loss was due to widespread cheating. Many investigations have found no proof of the widespread voter fraud Trump and his GOP allies claimed,” it said.
Smith is likely to step down from his position after ending his cases against President-elect Donald Trump, according to reports.
A Justice Department source told CNN that Smith is in talks with DOJ leaders about how best to wind down the Jan. 6 case as well as an appeal of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling over the summer to throw out his classified documents case against the soon-to-be 47th president.
“Trump has threatened to fire Smith, but Smith expects to be gone before Trump takes office,” CNN reported.
“The talks between Smith and DOJ leaders extend beyond Trump’s criminal cases to questions about what to do with other defendants in the classified documents case as well as the special counsel’s office and what happens to its budget and staff,” the outlet continued.
Smith is required to submit a report on his work to Attorney General Merrick Garland. It remains unclear whether the timing of Smith’s departure will be affected if the report needs to be reviewed and approved by the intelligence community, according to sources familiar with the discussions, CNN said.
Smith is working to finalize the report before Trump takes office, as Garland will need to approve it and decide whether any part of it will be released publicly, one source said. The New York Times was the first to report Smith’s plans to resign from his post.
As president, Trump is afforded protections against prosecution that he didn’t have as a private citizen. Longstanding Justice Department policy dictates that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for crimes, and a Supreme Court ruling this summer confirmed that Trump has “absolute” immunity from prosecution for actions taken within his core constitutional powers as president, CNN said.
Before his departure, Smith will need to determine how to resolve the two criminal cases he initiated against Trump. In Florida, Smith has appealed Cannon’s decision to dismiss the classified documents case, which found that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed as special counsel and that the funding for his office also violated the law.
In Washington, D.C., Smith’s team is moving forward with the criminal case accusing Trump of orchestrating a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election following the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, CNN noted.
