DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith Leaves After Finishing Trump Investigations

Jack Smith departed the Department of Justice after concluding his investigations of President-elect Trump because

After finishing his two criminal investigations against President-elect Donald Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith left the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November 2022, but he resigned a few days before Trump’s inauguration. A court document filed Saturday with US District Judge Aileen Cannon of Florida included a footnote revealing his departure.

The document states that on January 7, 2025, the Special Counsel finished his job and turned in his final confidential report. On January 10, he left the Department.

Following Trump’s reelection in November, Smith’s retirement was largely anticipated because both of his cases against the president-elect were dropped because of a long-standing Department of Justice rule that forbids prosecuting a sitting president.

Trump has stated that Smith should be “thrown out of the country” and has regularly threatened to terminate Smith as soon as he takes office, according to cnbc.com.

DOJ officials urged Trump-appointed Cannon in the filing not to follow through on her order from last week, which temporarily prevented the DOJ from making Smith’s probe into Trump’s meddling in the 2020 election results public. Trump’s former co-defendants are trying to prevent Garland from distributing a section of Smith’s findings to members of Congress and have urged Cannon to extend her order.

Late Friday, the DOJ submitted an urgent plea to a federal appeals court, requesting that the injunction be overturned in order to expedite the release of Smith’s investigative findings.

Cannon had already declared that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unlawful, leading him to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago documents case against Trump.