Jack Smith, who led the prosecution of Trump, resigns

Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed two unsuccessful federal lawsuits against President-elect Donald J. Trump, resigned this week, according to a memo buried in court documents, a remarkably quiet conclusion to a fight that redefined the legal landscape and politics of the country.

Mr. Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor who fought a bitter and protracted two-front battle with Trump's legal team but lost in both a district court and the Supreme Court shaped by Mr. Trump left his offices in Washington on Friday. according to a senior law enforcement official.

His departure was expected. Mr. Smith had signaled his intention to leave before Mr. Trump, who had threatened to fire and punish him, took office on January 20.

Ultimately, Mr. Smith made no official announcement. His spokesperson made no comment.

The special counsel left after his efforts in the courtroom were rendered moot by Mr. Trump's political victory in November. Under a Justice Department policy barring prosecution of a sitting president, Mr. Smith was forced to drop the two lawsuits he filed against Mr. Trump in 2023, one in Florida, accusing him of mishandling a trove of classified documents, and the other in Washington, accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Smith's last week was marked by another legal setback from Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed jurist who presided over the Florida documents case: She temporarily blocked the release of his report final at least until Monday.

The monumental legal saga, which embittered Mr. Trump and strengthened him for his remarkable return to power, ended with a single line at the bottom of the last page of a brief sent to Judge Cannon on Saturday: The lawyer special completed its work and submitted its final confidential report on January 7, 2025 and separated from the department on January 10.

Mr. Smith's resignation left unfinished a final step in the more than two-year odyssey he undertook in investigating and ultimately bringing charges against Mr. Trump: the release of a two-volume report detailing his decision-making in the two criminal cases.

Lawyers for Mr. Trump and those of his two co-defendants in the documents case fought fiercely last week to prevent the release of the two volumes. In court papers, they criticized the report as a one-sided and illegal political attack on the president-elect and complained that it unfairly implicates some expected and anonymous members of his new administration.

The report amounts to Mr. Smith's parting words on the work he began when he was first nominated in November 2022, shortly after Mr. Trump announced he was running for president again. It contains his explanation for why he brought the charges he did in both cases as well as his legal reasoning for not bringing further charges.

Each of the cases died in different ways.

The classified documents case was dismissed outright by Judge Cannon in a July ruling that concluded, contrary to decades of precedent, that Mr. Smith had been illegally appointed to his special counsel position. Although Mr. Smith's deputies appealed the decision, they dropped the challenge against Mr. Trump after his re-election, but not against his two co-defendants.

Around the same time, the Supreme Court blocked the election interference case in a landmark ruling that granted Mr. Trump a broad form of immunity for official acts he performed as president. The decision not only called into question many of the allegations contained in Mr. Smith's indictment, but, more importantly, made it impossible to hold a trial on these charges before the election.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department said it did not intend to immediately release the volume of Mr. Smith's report regarding the classified documents affair because the prosecution of Mr. former co-defendants . Trump, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, continued. The department said it planned to show that portion of the report privately to members of Congress and make it public only after all proceedings against the two men were complete.

The Justice Department, however, plans to release the volume regarding the election interference case as soon as possible. But lawyers for Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira asked Judge Cannon to extend his order blocking the report.

Both investigations into Mr. Trump were initially conducted by regular federal prosecutors. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland put Mr. Smith in charge of the cases after Mr. Trump announced his intention to run for president in order to put some distance between the investigations and the Justice Department.

Mr. Smith was the right choice to complete these cases in an impartial and urgent manner, Mr. Garland said in announcing the appointment of the upstate New York native, who was the lead prosecutor in The Hague investigating the war crimes in Kosovo.

Mr. Smith, 55, made an elusive figure. He gave no interviews and kept a low profile, appearing only briefly before reporters to read short statements affirming his intention to investigate Mr. Trump fairly and expeditiously.

Upholding the rule of law is a fundamental principle of the Department of Justice, Smith said, announcing the Florida indictments in August 2023. And our nation's commitment to statehood of law constitutes an example for the world. We have a set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone.

Now Mr. Smith and the small team of veteran prosecutors who worked on the Trump cases could find themselves in the crosshairs of Republicans. Three of the Trump team lawyers he opposed were given top positions at the Justice Department and the White House by Mr. Trump, who repeatedly suggested that those who put him on the dock should suffer the consequences.

“I defeated the deranged Jack Smith, he’s a deranged individual,” Mr. Trump told reporters in Florida this week. We didn't do anything wrong. We didn't do anything wrong on anything.

Some Democrats, including Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, have called on President Biden to issue a preemptive pardon to Mr. Smith and his team.

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