Conclusions of the Jack Smith Case

January 20th, 2025

Jana Schodzinski

On Monday, January 13, federal justices confirmed that the Justice Department may release the first volume of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on the January 6 insurrection. Despite this, the second volume, which details his investigation on former president Donald Trump’s other federal case, may never be publicized due to the president elect’s influence over the Justice Department, especially with the inauguration mere days away.

Jack Smith was appointed as special counsel to the criminal investigation against Donald Trump concerning efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as the withholding of government documents at the former president’s Mar-A-Lago estate on November 18, 2022. Despite Smith’s claims that the reports would have led to Trump’s conviction, the 2024 presidential election set these efforts askew. After the November election, the case was dismissed without prejudice due to policies restricting prosecutions of sitting presidents. However, this did not shut the door on the reports that Jack Smith submitted. When Trump’s lawyers were shown a draft of the report, they alleged that it was no more than an “attempted political hit job whose sole purpose is to disrupt the presidential transition.”

After the release of the 137-page first volume, Smith immediately stepped down from his position as special counsel, as well as resigned in total from the Department of Justice. The report held tremendous details on the events of January 6, from capitol officers experiencing “shell shock” to Trump’s alleged “ability and willingness to use…social media to target witnesses, courts, and department employees.” Numerous officers went into detail about their firsthand experiences during the insurrection, which were as gruesome as anticipated. One, in particular, described his concern for those in the Capitol who were not armed or prepared for combat.

“What are they going to do to somebody else that’s in there, that’s maybe staff or a congressman or the press? What are they going to do to them? We can take the beating. I don’t know if these other people can take the beating, too.”

Trump was, unsurprisingly, displeased with the report, calling Smith “deranged” and “a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election”. Smith defended himself, stating that Trump’s accusations of his defending the Biden administration are “laughable”. Luckily for the president-elect, the Justice Department plans to hold off on the publication of the second volume until the legal proceedings regarding the co-defendants are completed.