Republicans Celebrate the Death of Jack Smith’s Allegations Against Trump

Republicans are applauding the end of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into President-elect Trump just weeks after the former president’s election victory. Mr. Smith announced at a hearing on Monday that he would withdraw his charges because it is not allowed to indict a sitting president.

The special counsel, who was appointed to the post by Attorney General Garland in 2022, said in two separate court filings that he would drop the charges against Trump, as well as the charges filed against him in Washington for allegedly attempting to steal the 2020 election. He kept secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago club after leaving the White House.

In his motion dismiss America “has never encountered a situation here where a federal indictment against a private citizen is returned by a grand jury and criminal prosecution is already in progress when the defendant is elected President,” Mr. Smith wrote to Judge Tanya Chutkan in the Washington case.”

Republicans were quick to pop the champagne corks for their standard-bearer following the introduction of their impeachment motion.

“Today’s decision by the DOJ ends unconstitutional federal lawsuits against President Trump and is a major victory for the rule of law. The American People and President Trump demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system, and we look forward to it.

“We are uniting our country,” Trump’s new White House communications director, Steven Cheung, said in a statement.

After Mr. Smith’s motion for impeachment was filed, the president-elect wrote of “This was a political usurpation and the lowest point in our Country’s History that such a thing could happen, yet I persevered against all odds and WON.”

Vice President-elect Vance wrote of X: “If Donald J. Trump had lost an election, he very well could have spent the rest of his life in prison.” “These prosecutions have always been political. Now is the time to ensure that what happened to President Trump never happens again in this country.”

“I’m still not tired of winning!” wrote the official account of the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on X. The panel’s chairman, Congressman Jim Jordan, will remain in his post during the next Congress, where he will play a key role in overseeing the Justice Department.

Trump’s criminal prosecutions, which stretch from Florida to Georgia and from the nation’s capital to Manhattan, have dominated much of the coverage of the 2024 race, especially after his conviction on 34 counts by a New York jury. The allegation that he was the victim of political persecution was so central to Trump’s case that even Trump’s primary rivals for the presidency, including Governor DeSantis, Ambassador Haley, Governor Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy, had promised pardons to the then-former president.

Shortly before withdrawing from the primary, Mr. DeSantis attributed his loss in part to Mr. Smith and other prosecutors going after the former president because it helped revive Republican support for Trump.

“If I could change one thing, I wish Trump wasn’t impeached for these issues,” Mr. DeSantis told the Christian Broadcasting Network in December 2023. , I guess, there’s a lot of other stuff and that’s sucking up all the oxygen.”

Mr. Smith likely won’t have to testify before Congress after Republicans take control in January. While he reportedly plans to resign from the government altogether, he may be recalled to speak to lawmakers about his processes and findings, where he could be the punching bag Republicans have long sought.

The Senate’s two leading Republicans, Senator Grassley, who will lead the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Johnson, who will lead a powerful investigative subcommittee, have already told Mr. Smith’s office to preserve the records in case of a congressional investigation.

“Given the Justice Department’s past destruction of federal records related to congressional oversight and the political bias that influences decision-making, we request that you preserve all records related to the Justice Department’s criminal investigations of former President Trump conducted by Special Counsel Smith,” Messrs. Grassley and Johnson wrote a letter to Mr. Garland and FBI director Christopher Wray on Nov. 14. “Past inappropriate behavior cannot be repeated in this matter; Therefore, all records must be preserved so that Congress can conduct an objective and independent review.”

Even if congressional investigations go nowhere, Mr. Smith may well be investigated by the Justice Department once Trump appoints his appointees.

Pam Bondi, the president-elect’s pick for attorney general who previously served as Florida’s attorney general for eight years, once claimed that prosecutors pursuing Trump should be tried personally. “The Justice Department, the prosecutors, the bad ones will be prosecuted,” Ms. Bondi told Fox News in 2023. “Inspectors will investigate.”