US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned, as the Republican US president-elect prepared to return to the White House.
Smith resigned on Friday from the US Department of Justice, according to a court filing on Saturday to US District Judge Aileen Cannon, asking her to lift a court order she issued blocking release of his final report.
Notice of Smith’s resignation came in a footnote in the filing, which said the special counsel had completed his work, submitted his final confidential report on January 7, and “separated” from the Justice Department on January 10.
A former war crimes prosecutor, Smith brought two of the four criminal cases Trump faced after leaving office, but saw them grind to a halt after a Trump-appointed judge in Florida dismissed one and the US Supreme Court – with three justices appointed by Trump – found that former presidents have sweeping immunity from prosecution for official acts. Neither case went to trial.
After Trump defeated Democratic US Vice-President Kamala Harris in the November 5 election, Smith dropped both cases, citing a longstanding Justice Department rule against prosecuting sitting presidents.
In asking courts to dismiss the charges, Smith’s team defended the merits of the cases they had brought, signalling only that Trump’s impending return to the White House made them untenable.