Smith, a war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, injured his leg in a recent bicycle accident and is recovering from surgery. He was tapped Friday to assume control over Justice Department investigations into Trump’s role in efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election, as well the department’s investigation into possible mishandling of national defense secrets at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club, where more than 300 classified documents were recovered months after he left the White House.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said it was in the public interest to put a special counsel in charge of the cases, rather than Justice Department officials, to avoid a perceived conflict as Trump launches his 2024 presidential campaign and President Biden — who defeated Trump in 2020 — says he will run as well.
Garland and Smith have both vowed that the appointment of a special counsel will not slow the work in either case, and Smith has already become involved, albeit from the Netherlands. For example, a court filing Monday said Smith has reviewed arguments in a months-long court fight between the Justice Department and Trump’s lawyers over papers seized in the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.
A panel of federal appeals court judges in Atlanta is set to hear arguments Tuesday over whether a federal judge was right to appoint an outside legal expert known as a special master to review most of those documents.
Justice Department officials declined to answer questions Monday about the mechanics of the special counsel’s start. Nor would they say whether some senior officials who have been intimately involved with investigating Trump will now step back from that work, or temporarily leave their agency roles to work at the special counsel office.
Mary McCord, a former senior national security official at the Justice Department, said in this case she does not expect political appointees to work in the special counsel office, though career prosecutors could continue on the case in that new structure.
The Justice Department may have to make key personnel decisions to decide which career employees will move over to work on the special counsel team. For example, Jay Bratt, who heads the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, has played a large role in the Mar-a-Lago investigation so far, but is likely working on other major investigations within the department that are not related to Trump.
If Bratt is detailed to the special counsel, he would not remain in his current role, McCord said.
That means the Justice Department must determine whether it makes more sense for Bratt to forgo his other responsibilities and work on the special counsel full-time. McCord said if Bratt remains in his current role, the special counsel could still seek advice from him.
Beyond those types of decisions, she said, she wouldn’t expect the course of the Mar-a-Lago investigation to change much because of Smith’s appointment — primarily because the criminal probe is well underway, with prosecutors and federal agents having secured key evidence.
“The idea is that Smith will be leading the day-to-day of the investigation,” McCord said, noting that federal regulations state that Garland can veto Smith’s charging decisions if he deems them to be “inappropriate and unwarranted.”
Most of Smith’s former colleagues at the Justice Department generally praised him…
Read More: Jack Smith launches special counsel role in Trump cases from The Netherlands
