As Donald Trump is set to return to the White House, U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against the president-elect on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned.
Smith resigned on Friday from the Department of Justice, according to a court filing on Saturday to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, asking her to lift a court order she issued blocking release of his final report.
Notice of Smith’s resignation came in a footnote in the filing, which said the Special Counsel had completed his work, submitted his final confidential report on Jan. 7, and “separated” from the Justice Department on Jan. 10.
A former war crimes prosecutor, Smith brought two of the four criminal cases Trump faced after leaving office, but saw them grind to a halt after a Trump-appointed judge in Florida dismissed one and the U.S. Supreme Court — with three justices appointed by Trump — found that former presidents have sweeping immunity from prosecution for official acts. Neither case went to trial.
Cases Against Trump
After Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election, Smith dropped both cases, citing a longstanding Justice Department rule against prosecuting sitting presidents.
In asking courts to dismiss the charges, Smith’s team defended the merits of the cases they had brought, signaling only that Trump’s impending return to the White House made them untenable.
Smith’s departure is another marker of the collapse of the criminal cases against Trump, which could end without any legal consequences for the incoming president and sparked a backlash that helped fuel his political comeback.Smith’s resignation from the Justice Department was expected.
Trump, who has frequently called Smith “deranged”, had said he would fire him immediately upon taking office on Jan. 20, and has suggested that he may pursue retribution against Smith and others who investigated him once he returns to office.
Trump in 2023 became the first sitting or former U.S. president to face criminal prosecution, first in New York, where he was charged with trying to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Smith’s charges followed, accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified material after leaving office and of trying to overturn his 2020 loss, a campaign that sparked the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Prosecutors in Georgia also charged Trump over his efforts to overturn his election defeat in that state.
Trump Denies Wrongdoing
Trump denied wrongdoing and assailed the prosecutions as politically motivated attempts to damage his campaign. He raised millions in campaign contributions from courthouse appearances and used the cases to drive a powerful narrative that the political establishment was arrayed against him and his supporters.
The Justice Department defended the cases, saying they were run by career prosecutors who operated free of political influence.
Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 — nearly two years after the Capitol attack — to lead the Justice Department’s twin ongoing investigations into Trump. That move came just days after Trump announced a campaign to return to the White House in the 2024 election.
Garland, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, said Smith would provide a degree of independence in the highly sensitive investigations. Garland had rebuffed earlier calls to name a special prosecutor, insisting he could appropriately oversee the Trump probes.
Smith returned to Washington from The Hague where he prosecuted war crimes cases arising from the 1998-1999 Kosovo War. He previously led the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section and worked in the federal prosecutor’s office in Brooklyn, New York, developing a reputation as a tenacious investigator.
At the Hague, Smith won the conviction of Salih Mustafa, a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander who ran a prison where torture took place during the conflict.
