Jack Smith Prevails In Federal Court Against Trump

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A new year means new opportunities for Donald Trump to lose in court.

Even as potential consequences like criminal charges for the ex-president still linger as mere possibilities, he’s not having a blast. D.C. federal Judge Beryl Howell has granted a request from the Justice Department for an order directing that the Trump team provide the names of private investigators who conducted already reported searches of Trump properties for any documents marked classified still there after the FBI raided Trump’s southern Florida resort Mar-a-Lago in August. All that’s been reported that these investigators actually found were two documents in a storage facility in southern Florida housing materials evidently originating at least in large part with a Virginia office used earlier by Trump’s team after he left the presidency. The third-party investigators also searched Trump Tower in New York City and Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Evidently, they also conducted another look at Mar-a-Lago, finding nothing else. The Justice Department, where Special Counsel Jack Smith is leading the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified material from his administration, previously directly asked the Trump team directly for the private investigators’ identities, but they responded by offering to make them available for questioning while their identities were sealed by protective order in connection to claimed concerns about leaks. It was after that stage that department investigators turned to Howell. Confirmation of prosecutors’ subsequent plans — meaning how Smith’s team might go about the possibility of formal questioning or the like — wasn’t immediately clear.

Elsewhere, reports revealed the addition of two experienced prosecutors to Smith’s team, including a former head of the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice, a department branch that deals with misconduct by public figures, even including candidates, Congressional staff, and judges. The team there can both bring its own cases and consult with fellow prosecutors. Smith, who is now back in the U.S. after some recovery from a bike accident, works largely independently at the Justice Department, without daily reports to any other figure — and he will evidently eventually be tasked with helping decide on whether to charge Trump or key figures close to him over the docs scandal or the political schemes to keep him in power after the 2020 presidential race he’s also examining.

His team has recently received expansive materials in response to subpoenas to local and state election officials, including documentation of a call to a Michigan county clerk from someone claiming to be on Trump’s team and seeking access to secured election equipment.