Jack Smith, a former special counsel under the Biden administration, has been summoned by the House Judiciary Committee in relation to his prosecution of ex-President Donald Trump.
Smith was responsible for two federal cases against Trump, one concerning classified documents and the other related to the events of January 6th.
The subpoena issued to Smith read, "the Committee on the Judiciary is continuing to conduct oversight of the operations of the Office of Special Counsel you ledspecifically, your teams prosecution of President Donald J Trump and his co-defendants. Due to your service as Special Counsel, the Committee believes that you possess information that is vital to its oversight of this matter."
As reported by The Post Millennial, Smith was ordered to appear for a deposition on December 17 at 10 am, and to return the requested documents by December 12.
Smith was at the helm of the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the January 6th case against Trump during the Biden administration. The former case accused Trump of mishandling classified documents following his initial presidential term. In June 2023, Trump faced 37 federal charges, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, among others.
These charges were the result of an FBI raid on Trumps Palm Beach estate in August 2022, where they claimed to find classified documents.
However, the case was not without controversy. Doubts were raised when Smiths legal team confessed to tampering with evidence in the case. Prosecutors admitted, "There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans. The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court." In July 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case, ruling that Smith's appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional.
In August 2023, Trump was indicted on four federal counts related to the events of January 6, 2021. However, by late 2024, Smith had filed a motion to drop all charges in the January 6 case against Trump.
In his motion, Smith wrote, "As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, the defendant, Donald J. Trump, will be inaugurated as President on January 20, 2025. It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President."
He further added, "But the Department and the country have never faced the circumstance here, where a federal indictment against a private citizen has been returned by a grand jury and a criminal prosecution is already underway when the defendant is elected President."
Smith concluded that "after careful consideration, the Department has determined that" the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsels "prior opinions concerning the Constitutions prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated."
This decision underscores the complex and unprecedented legal situation surrounding the prosecution of a President-elect.
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