Trump cases handed over to special counsel
US Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigations into efforts by Donald Trump to undo his loss in the 2020 presidential election and his possession and handling of classified documents at his Florida estate.
The move is a recognition of the political implications of two investigations that involve a former president who announced on Tuesday that he would be a candidate in the presidential election in 2024.
Trump’s announcement of his candidacy and President Joe Biden’s likely 2024 run were factors in the decision to appoint a special counsel, Garland said. The appointment would allow prosecutors to continue their work “indisputably guided” only by the facts and the law, he said.
Garland appointed Jack Smith, who once led the Justice Department unit that investigates public corruption and since 2018 has been the chief prosecutor at The Hague investigating alleged war crimes in Kosovo. He will be the third special counsel in five years to examine issues involving Trump.
Trump lambasted the appointment, saying: “I have been going through this for six years. … And I am not going to go through it anymore. And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this.”
A representative of Trump’s campaign said: “This is a totally expected political stunt by a feckless, politicized, weaponized Biden Department of Justice.”
A White House spokesman deferred comment to the Justice Department.
Garland said he was confident that the appointment of the special counsel would not slow down either investigation and emphasized that he will ultimately make the decision on whether to prosecute.
Smith said he would “conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice”. The investigations would “not pause or flag” under his watch, and he would “move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate”, he said.
Smith was a federal prosecutor in an office that was among the first to investigate a young Donald Trump in the 1970s, on potential fraud charges. It was a roughly six-month investigation and closed without charges. Trump soon after began telling people about his ordeal.
Twitter reinstated
On Saturday Trump’s Twitter account was reinstated after the platform’s new owner Elon Musk ran a poll in which a narrow majority of voters supported the move, days after Trump announced his 2024 candidacy.
Trump was banned from the platform early last year for his role in the Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted, shortly after the 24-hour poll ended.
However, on Saturday Trump said he had no interest in returning to Twitter. A little more than 15 million Twitter users voted in the poll, with 51.8 percent voting in favor of Trump’s reinstatement. Trump had more than 88 million users when his account was suspended.