Former US President Donald Trump in Florida on Tuesday evening
Image: AP
The confiscated secret documents and Trump’s behavior during the storming of the Capitol in 2021 are the focus. Just a few days ago, the Republican announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidency.
Dhe US Department of Justice has appointed Jack Smith as an independent special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump. Former US Attorney Jack Smith will lead investigations into two facts: the secret documents confiscated from Trump’s private home Mar-a-Lago and parts of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday in Washington.
The appointment of an independent special counsel comes three days after Trump announced his intention to run again in the 2024 presidential election. This step is likely to be aimed at taking the wind out of the sails of allegations of political instrumentalization by the Ministry of Justice.
Jack Smith is a former chief prosecutor at the Special Court in The Hague, where he investigated war crimes in Kosovo. Garland said Friday Smith has “earned a reputation as an impartial and resolute prosecutor.”
Independent special counsel in the Trump case: former US Attorney Jack Smith, here in a photo from 2010
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Image: AP
A special investigator had already dealt with Trump: Robert Mueller investigated allegations of Russian interference in Trump’s favor in the 2016 US presidential election during the Republican’s tenure in the White House in 2017. During his almost two-year investigation, the former head of the FBI federal police did not find sufficient evidence of illegal secret collusion between Trump’s campaign team and Russia. However, he expressly did not exonerate the President from the suspicion of criminal obstruction of justice.