Special Counsel Jack Smith is planning to retire before incoming President-Elect has the chance to fire him. It’s the first smart thing that Smith has done in the past two years since Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered him to stop Donald Trump’s reelection bid. Smith has also reportedly told his team that they should find something else to work on over the next two months before Trump’s inauguration.
Trump has promised to fire Smith within “two seconds” of being inaugurated. Smith’s departure from the DOJ is the final admission that there was never any substance to the criminal cases against Donald Trump in the first place. The January 6 case in Washington, DC, and the classified documents case in Florida were only launched to try to stop Trump’s reelection. What’s the point now?
Smith is trying to wind both cases down before he retires. He doesn’t plan to leave anything behind that others at the DOJ can even work on. (Translation: There’s probably a lot of document shredding going on in Smith’s office now.)
The paperwork case in Florida was already shut down in July when District Court Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed it entirely. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama were never prosecuted for taking classified documents home after they left office. They never returned the documents, either. Why should Trump suddenly be prosecuted for the same thing?
It has always been Justice Department policy to not attempt to prosecute a sitting president for anything. There’s no possible way that Smith would be able to rush the ridiculous January 6 case through before Trump takes office, even with the help of a sympathetic judge.
So, Jack Smith is finally going away. Just don’t go too far, Jack. We have a feeling that Attorney General Matt Gaetz is going to want to talk to you about some things.
