US attorney general to appoint special counsel in Trump criminal investigation

Old_Joe

Garland to address media at 2:15 pm eastern time

Attorney general Merrick Garland plans to hold a press conference at 2:15 pm eastern time, following reports that he will name a special prosecutor to decide whether to bring charges against Donald Trump and his allies.

Beyond just the investigation into government secrets Trump allegedly retained at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Politico reports that the special counsel will also look into Trump’s attempts to undermine the 2020 election. The justice department has not yet announced who they will be appointed to job.

Link to report in The Guardian

Old_Joe

Additional Information from The New York Times:

Garland to Name Special Counsel for Trump Investigations

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick B. Garland will announce on Friday that he is appointing a special counsel to take over two major criminal investigations involving former President Donald J. Trump, including his role in events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and his handling of sensitive government documents.

The announcement, which a senior law enforcement official said Mr. Garland would make Friday afternoon, came after Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that he planned to run for president again, a decision some have claimed was taken to make it more difficult for prosecutors to pursue criminal cases against him.

The appointment of a special counsel was a way for the Justice Department to insulate its investigations against Mr. Trump from political considerations. While special counsels can be fired from their positions, the process is much more arduous than removing ordinary prosecutors from a case.

Special counsels are semi-independent prosecutors who by Justice Department regulations can be appointed for high-level investigations when there can be a conflict of interest, or the appearance of it. They exercise greater day-to-day autonomy than regular United States attorneys, but are ultimately still subject to the control of the attorney general.

For Mr. Trump, it will be a return to a familiar dynamic. While in office, he faced a special counsel investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III, who scrutinized the nature of various links between his 2016 campaign and Russia.

Already, Mr. Trump’s supporters have accused the Justice Department under the Biden administration of investigating Mr. Trump for political reasons, and some Republicans have floated the idea of impeaching Mr. Garland if he pursues charges against him. That tension is almost certain to become more pronounced now that Mr. Trump formally announced his third bid for the presidency.

The department has “a true conflict of interest, real or perceived,” said Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law. “It would be difficult to put measures in place that would reassure people that the Justice Department was acting with independence on the Trump investigation.”

The political swirl around the investigations of Mr. Trump intensified this week when the Republicans won control of the House.

Old_Joe

More from the NY Times:

White House officials say they had no involvement in the special counsel decision.

Officials at the White House said on Friday that they were “not involved” in the decision by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate former President Donald J. Trump.

Asked whether President Biden or others in the administration were aware of the attorney general’s decision ahead of time, a White House aide noted that the Justice Department makes decisions about criminal investigations independently of the president or his White House staff.

The official referred all questions about the appointment of a special counsel to the Justice Department.

Mr. Trump announced on Tuesday that he is running for president again. Mr. Biden said last week that he “intends” to run in 2024 but would talk with his family before announcing a decision early next year.

When Mr. Trump was president, he repeatedly sought to interfere with his attorney general and other Justice Department officials, harassing them on Twitter and repeatedly pressuring them to do his bidding.

Mr. Biden has made a point to insist that he would reverse those practices and return to the more traditional practice of past presidents, who distanced themselves from criminal investigations being conducted by the department, especially when they involved political figures.

Aides have repeatedly declined to discuss the investigations being conducted by the Justice Department into the former president. That appears unlikely to change now that a special counsel has been appointed.

Old_Joe

More from Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel on Friday to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

The move, being announced just three days after Trump formally launched his 2024 candidacy, is a recognition of the unmistakable political implications of two investigations that involve not only a former president but also a current White House hopeful.

Garland said Friday that Trump’s announcement of his presidential candidacy and President Joe Biden’s likely 2024 run were factors in his decision to appoint a special counsel. Garland said the appointment would allow prosecutors to continue their work “indisputably guided” only by the facts and the law.

Though the appointment installs a new supervisor atop the probes — both of which are expected to accelerate now that the midterm elections are over — the special counsel will still report to Garland, who has ultimate say of whether to bring charges.

The role will be filled by Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s public integrity section in Washington and who later served as the acting chief federal prosecutor in Nashville, Tennessee, during the Obama administration. More recently, he has been the chief prosecutor for the special court in the Hague that is tasked with investigating international war crimes.

The Justice Department described Smith as a registered independent, an effort to blunt any attack of perceived political bias.

“The extraordinary circumstances here demand it,” Garland said of the appointment.

The special counsel’s probe will combine the investigation into “whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election” and the investigation into the classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Representatives for Trump, a Republican, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

There was no immediate reason provided for the decision or for its timing. Garland has spoken repeatedly of his singular focus on the facts, the evidence and the law in the Justice Department’s decision-making and of his determination to restore political independence to the agency following the tumultuous years of the Trump administration.

And there does not seem to be an obvious conflict like the one that prompted the last appointment of a special counsel to handle Trump-related investigations. The Trump Justice Department named former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead the investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.

Link to the AP Report

Anna

Garland, the pooba.

AndyJ

It may be a good idea politically, but the time to get a team organized and rolling will probably introduce a significant delay in the process. The Georgia state case will be way, way ahead of the federal case and likely a better chance at achieving justice now before the 2024 campaign.

Mark

I wish Garland could have appointed Liz Cheney to the post.

BenWP

Mr Smith has an impressive bio, including doing investigations into political corruption. He looks like a tough cookie. Mr Smith will be going back to Washington from The Hague, but not just yet. The Times also reported that he’s recovering from a bicycle accident. I’m sure DT will find a way to demean him for having been injured, in the way that be tried to put down Senator McCain.

Crash

No one here has uttered it yet, so I will: it's about f*****g time!

Old_Joe

@AndyJ-

It's important to note that a Special Counsel is not the same as an Independent Counsel. A "Special Counsel" is usually someone who is considered to be highly qualified and politically neutral, and not a regular employee of the Justice Department. Typically, after a preliminary investigation by lawyers who are regular employees of the Justice Department, he or she will be hired to assume command of that investigation and those employees.

Since this Special Prosecutor is not a regular Justice Department employee, the presumption is that they are insulated from the normal internal department politics and biases. Nevertheless, they still report to the Attorney General, in this case, Merrick Garland. Also, since they are assuming command of Justice Department personnel who have done the preliminary work on the case, there should be little time lost in continuing that operation.

An "Independent Counsel" is someone hired to initiate, control, and pursue a specific inquiry into a clearly defined legal matter. That operation is funded by the Government, but is not under the direct control of the Justice Department. Because of that, such inquiries can (and sometimes do) go on for an unspecified and essentially unlimited period of time. That was clearly demonstrated by the infamous Whitewater investigation conducted by Ken Star from 1994 to 1998 in his prosecution of Bill Clinton.

Given the time constraints in the Trump investigation, it would be impossible to turn that over to an essentially uncontrollable Independent Counsel.

Observant1

I was displeased when Trump announced his intention to run in the 2024 presidential race.
How can this man who fomented an insurrection and deliberately mishandled sensitive government
documents (and may have obstructed justice) be allowed to run? This is a mockery of our democracy.

From https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/18/us/trump-garland-special-counsel:

"Even though Mr. Garland cast his decision as an effort to ensure public faith in the impartiality in the department’s investigations of Mr. Trump, it remains unclear if Mr. Smith’s appointment will influence public perception in a meaningful way."

I understand why Attorney General Garland appointed a special counsel.
Trump and his acolytes will nevertheless still contend this is a "witch hunt" initiated by the Democrats.

"Repeatedly calling the appointment 'unfair,' Mr. Trump said, 'They want to do bad things to the greatest movement in the history of our country, but in particular, bad things to me.'”

Trump is a master of "playing the victim" and not accepting any responsibility for his actions.
People who believe his was the "greatest movement" are delusional.
As a result of these investigations, "The Donald" may finally face real consequences for his unlawful behavior.
This is a man who belongs in the Big House and not in the White House.

Crash

Bingo. You said it.

AndyJ

Thanks, @Old_Joe; wasn't aware of the difference.

Old_Joe

@AndyJ- Yeah, I wasn't either until we got into this situation.

PRESSmUP

I've read where Mr. Smith's focus would be on persons not specifically within the mob that attacked the Capitol. Given his charter of determining “whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election”, I assume that this would include anyone involved with the fake elector scheme.

I followed the hearings and analysis very closely, and the mob scene and its violence was merely cover...a smokescreen for the plot to delay the Electoral College vote count with the fake electors as the reason. The number of people who are in peril is quite high...enough that the current GOP majority in the House may be in jeopardy. After all, 8 GOP representatives didn't pursue pardons from then-President Trump for no reason.

As for Jack Smith's other focus, the stolen National Defense material...that's open and shut. A clear violation and one in which Jack Smith has prosecutions to fall back on for that same precise crime.

Crash

Quite right. ELECTED officials---Cruz, Hawley and the rest--- are responsible for attempting to carry out that plot. Seditious scum-pigs.