DOJ appoints special counsel to oversee Trump investigations

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Attorney General Merrick Garland and other top Justice Department officials looked at a number of possible special counsel candidates before deciding on longtime prosecutor Jack Smith, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The officials spent weeks weighing this appointment, trying to find someone they believed could survive partisan scrutiny, the sources said. They also considered former DOJ officials and people who had served as judges.

Trump already has lashed out over the special counsel’s appointment, saying in an interview on Fox News Digital that he wouldn’t “partake in it.”

"I have been proven innocent for six years on everything — from fake impeachments to Mueller who found no collusion – and now I have to do it more?" Trump told the outlet. "It is not acceptable. It is so unfair. It is so political."

The former president called the decision to name a special counsel "the worst politicization of justice” and said that “the Republican Party has to stand up and fight.”

Who is Jack Smith? Smith is a veteran attorney who began a decades-long prosecutorial career in New York in the mid-1990s.

He is a former acting US attorney in Tennessee and once led the DOJ's Public Integrity Section, which handles election crimes and public corruption investigations.

Most recently, Smith served as a chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, where he investigated and adjudicated war crimes in Kosovo.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the Department of Justice after former President Donald Trump called Friday's announcement of a special counsel the “worst politicization of justice.”

In an interview with Fox News digital Friday, Trump told the outlet he "won't partake" in special counsel investigations into his handling of classified documents after leaving office or his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol.

In his first public comments since Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith to oversee two ongoing federal investigations, the former president told Fox News Digital he "hope(s) the Republicans have the courage to fight this."

Jean-Pierre referred further questions on the special counsel to the DOJ. 

Special counsel Jack Smith is expected to set up an office outside the Justice Department where he will oversee two investigations related to former President Donald Trump, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. 

Joining him will be the prosecutor teams currently led by Jay Bratt, a senior prosecutor in the DOJ’s national security division; Tom Windom, a seasoned prosecutor who had been assigned to the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC; as well as the FBI agents already assigned to the investigations into the mishandling of government documents and 2020 election interference. They will directly report to Smith.

A special counsel typically has a budget that isn’t easily limited and can decide how long to investigate. 

The fact that Smith won’t be under the day-to-day oversight of DOJ leadership means Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco likely won’t be getting the kind of regular updates that former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein received from Robert Mueller’s investigation. Instead, Smith may follow the model of John Durham, the special counsel investigating the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, who has had limited interactions with top DOJ officials.

Mueller’s investigative team worked out of office space in southwest DC, and Durham has operated from office space in northeast DC.

President Joe Biden was not aware of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint a special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations into the retention of classified documents at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort and parts of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, the White House told reporters Friday.

Garland announced special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment in remarks from the Department of Justice earlier Friday, citing Trump’s newly announced presidential campaign and Biden's stated intention to run as grounds for the move. 

"Based on recent developments, including the former president's announcement that he is a candidate for president in the next election, and the sitting president's stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel," Garland said.

During Friday’s White House press briefing, Jean-Pierre declined to say who ultimately informed Biden of the news, telling reporters that “a senior member of his staff would most likely have let him know about this,” adding she had yet to discuss the issue with Biden herself.

Former President Donald Trump said Friday he "won't partake" in special counsel investigations into his retention of classified documents after leaving office or his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol.

In his first public comments after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of a special counsel to oversee two ongoing federal investigations involving Trump and his associates, the former president told Fox News Digital he "hope[s] the Republicans have the courage to fight this." 

In May 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller said that Justice Department guidelines did not allow him to charge a sitting president, and as a result, his office did not determine whether Trump had committed obstruction of justice.

Trump continued, "I am not going to partake in it ... I announce and then they appoint a special prosecutor." 

Trump announced on Tuesday that he intends to seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Jack Smith, newly appointed as special counsel by the Department of Justice to oversee criminal investigations into former President Donald Trump, promised to conduct himself with "independent judgment."

“I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice. The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgement and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate,” he said, according to a statement from the DOJ.

Smith is the former chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, where he investigated war crimes in Kosovo.

A source close to former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign said the announcement of a special counsel overseeing the investigations into Trump will not change anything about his decision to run or how his team will handle his campaign moving forward. 

The campaign had been prepared for this announcement for several days, the source added.

Separately, in a statement to CNN, a Trump spokesperson responded: "This is a totally expected political stunt by a feckless, politicized, weaponized Biden Department of Justice." 

Trump has continued to say that the investigations are politically based, including during his 2024 announcement Tuesday, when he called himself a victim. 

Some people in former President Donald Trump’s orbit who were subpoenaed in the Department of Justice’s Jan. 6 probe have recently been given dates in the near future to appear before the grand jury, according to sources familiar with the situation. 

Many had believed and hoped that the investigation had slowed or even halted, as they hadn’t heard from the DOJ for weeks after meeting their subpoena document deadlines, multiple sources said.