{"id":942,"date":"2025-01-14T11:45:57","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T11:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/?p=942"},"modified":"2025-01-14T11:45:57","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T11:45:57","slug":"breaking-jack-smith-officially-resigns-from-the-doj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/?p=942","title":{"rendered":"BREAKING: Jack Smith Officially Resigns From The DOJ"},"content":{"rendered":"

Department of Justice prosecutor Jack Smith \u2014 who oversaw two ill-fated federal criminal cases filed by the Biden DOJ against President-elect Donald Trump during a competitive presidential campaign \u2014 has officially resigned from the Justice Department. Smith officially resigned from the DOJ on Friday after previously announcing that he would be \u201cwinding down\u201d his remaining case against Trump after he won re-election.<\/p>\n

News of Smith\u2019s departure came in a court filing Justice Department officials submitted to\u00a0U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Saturday afternoon. Smith has been seeking to release a \u201cfinal report\u201d on his defunct investigation into the Biden DOJ\u2019s chief political rival, which has thus far been blocked by Judge Cannon. The Florida-based federal judge previously Smith\u2019s controversial classified documents case against Trump \u2014 the first of two federal cases filed by Smith\u2019s office \u2014 after taking issue with the constitutional basis for his appointment as special prosecutor.<\/p>\n

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In her\u00a093-page decision, the Trump-appointed judge explained at length about the power of Congress to appoint special agents of the DOJ, a power that she said was not conferred to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. \u201cThe relevant history, according to Special Counsel Smith, shows that Congress tacitly authorized\u2014or silently acquiesced to\u2014the use of Section 515 (or its predecessor statutes) to appoint \u201cspecial attorneys\u201d like himself\u2026 Upon review of the murky historical record, the Court determines that, whatever themes can be drawn from that background, they cannot supplant the plain language of the statute itself, which clearly does not vest the Attorney General with such authority,\u201d Cannon wrote.<\/p>\n

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Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to reporters Friday, June 9, 2023, in Washington. Former President Donald Trump is facing 37 felony charges related to the mishandling of classified documents according to an indictment unsealed on Friday. (AP Photo\/Alex Brandon)<\/p>\n

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\u201cAt most, the history reflects an ad hoc, inconsistent practice of naming prosecutors from both inside and outside of government (typically in response to national scandal) who possessed wildly variant degrees of power and autonomy. The lack of consistency makes it near impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions about Congress\u2019s approval of modern special counsels like Special Counsel Smith\u2014much less its acquiescence to Section 515 as a vehicle for such appointments,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

An Atlanta-based federal appeals court on Thursday rejected a bid to block the partial release of a portion of Smith\u2019s final report detailing his investigation and prosecution of a leading presidential candidate.\u00a0The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit\u00a0denied\u00a0the request from Walt Nauta, an aide to Trump, and Carlos de Oliveira, the former property manager at Mar-a-Lago, who were charged for their role in allegedly mishandling classified documents. The 11th Circuit granted Smith\u2019s request to remove President-elect Trump from the case after his victory, though DOJ prosecutors are currently appealing\u00a0a lower court decision dismissing the charges against Nauta and de Oliveira, which cited the constitutional questions surrounding Smith\u2019s appointment.<\/p>\n

The documents case was brought despite the fact that Trump\u2019s legal team was in constant contact with the National Archives regarding potentially classified documents. Despite the fact that Trump was cooperating and had no reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary, heavily armed FBI agents\u00a0with deadly force authorization\u00a0opted to ransack then-candidate Trump\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

Agents then staged a photo op with \u201ctop secret\u201d folders to give the appearance that the president-elect was hoarding troves of classified documents, leading to several debunked conspiracy theories about the contents of the documents, including one that falsely claimed Trump was \u201cselling nuclear secrets.\u201d The folders were not included with the alleged classified documents, but were used in a viral photo from the raid.<\/p>\n

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Trump had contended that the alleged classified documents were declassified while he was leaving office. The boxes were also kept in a secure, locked room that was kept under 24-hour surveillance.\u00a0While Smith opted to bring charges against Trump, a separate special counsel opted not to bring criminal charges against President Biden for the\u00a0same conduct.<\/p>\n

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Department of Justice prosecutor Jack Smith \u2014 who oversaw two ill-fated federal criminal cases filed by the Biden DOJ against President-elect Donald Trump during a competitive presidential campaign \u2014 has officially resigned from the Justice Department. Smith officially resigned from the DOJ on Friday after previously announcing that he would be \u201cwinding down\u201d his remaining […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":943,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews06.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}