On Friday, in a news conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland named Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate two criminal cases against former President Donald Trump. Mr. Smith is an independent lawyer and a former crimes prosecutor. He will lead inquiries into the way in which Trump handled the classified documents that were recently seized from his Mar-A-Lago home as well as the alleged role he played in the Jan 6 Capitol riot.
On Friday, Mr Garland said, “In certain extraordinary cases it is in the public interest to appoint a special prosecutor to independently manage an investigation and prosecution.”
The Attorney General added that recent developments which included an announcement by the former president that he would run in the 2024 presidential elections and the intentions of the sitting president to also run for a second term in the 2024 elections made him reach a conclusion that the appointment of a special counsel was in public interest and that there would be public confidence in the investigation.
Shortly after his appointment, Mr Jack Smith released a statement that said that 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.”
He said that the probe would neither pause nor flag under his watch and that he would exercise independence and the investigations would move forward towards what facts and the law dictate.
Former President Donald Trump called the appointment as a “horrendous abuse of power.” He labeled the Justice Department as “corrupt and highly political” and described the special counsel as a “super-radical left.”
Jack Smith, a Harvard Law graduate, has worked as a prosecutor during the following presidential administrations Bush
Obama
Trump
Biden.
He is registered as a political Independent. He is leaving his post at the International Criminal Court (ICC) that investigates and prosecutes war criminals. He supervised roughly 100 prosecutors. He is returning to the nation to lead two important criminal investigations, in an impartial and independent manner.
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