Justice Department says Jack Smith report on Trump investigation ‘belongs in dustbin of history’
WASHINGTON (AP) — A report prepared by former special counsel Jack Smith Regarding the investigation of President Donald Trump hoarding of confidential documents The document will be consigned to the “dustbin of history” and should remain sealed, the Justice Department said in a strongly worded hearing at a hearing on Friday.
“The illegal product of an illegal investigation and prosecution belongs in the dustbin of history. The United States will leave it there,” prosecutors wrote.
The department’s stance mirrors that of Trump, whose lawyers this week asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to permanently block the release of the Smith report. That raises the possibility that a detailed report into a criminal investigation once considered to pose serious legal danger to Trump will remain secret from the public.
Smith and his team compiled a two-volume report on the investigations. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election After losing to Biden and leaving the White House after his first term, he kept secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.
Indictments emerged in both investigations. Abandoned by Smith’s team In light of Trump’s victory in the November 2024 election, the Justice Department’s long-standing legal views say sitting presidents cannot face federal investigation.
The volume on the election investigation was published in the final days of the Biden administration. But Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge in Florida who has issued several favorable rulings for Trump and his two co-defendants in the classified documents case, last year granted a defense request to at least temporarily halt the release of the report in that case. That edict meant Smith could not discuss the content of that investigation when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
The precautionary decision is planned to be lifted on February 24.
But Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, where the case was filed, said in a three-page court filing that the report should remain sealed. He and Manolo Reboso, another prosecutor in that office, wrote that Smith’s investigation was “unlawful from the beginning.”
They also wrote that Attorney General Pam Bondi determined that the report was “an internally deliberative communication that is privileged and confidential and should not be disclosed outside the Department of Justice.”
“Not only did Smith weaponize the Justice Department against a leading presidential candidate for an anti-democratic purpose, he did so without lawful authority and by targeting constitutionally protected activities,” prosecutors wrote.
Smith defended his investigations into Trump during his testimony on Thursday, emphasizing that he acted without regard to politics and did not think twice about the accusations against him.
Smith said of Trump: “No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required him to be held accountable. That’s what I did.”
