Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general nominee for U.S. President Joe Biden, listens during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Feb. 22, 2021. Garland signaled he'll make decisions independently from Biden and is pledging he'll take the lead in prosecuting participants in the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When the Justice Department named Jack Smith the special counsel to oversee multiple federal investigations into Donald Trump, many believed it would slow the process. After all, Smith was in Europe and recovering from a significant bike incident that left him hospitalized.
Smith has allayed many fears, making consequential moves toward possible legal actions.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel in November. Smith is in charge of pending investigations into Trump’s involvement with the January 6 Capitol riot, the classified documents found at Mar-A-Lago and 2020 election interference.
“The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch,” Smith said in a statement when he first was appointed. “I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”
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He wasn’t kidding.
This week, Smith issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The subpoena requires Raffensperger to talk about Trump’s request to illegally “find 11,780 votes.”
The move is the latest in a slew of legal actions. Smith forced former Trump officials Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin to testify before a grand jury, subpoenaed elections officials in swing states, and brought a motion for contempt against the former president for not turning over records.
Smith’s investigation has drawn comparisons to Robert Mueller‘s 2019 investigation into Trump’s ties with Russia. The famously slow-acting investigation ended with no criminal charges, mainly due to the fact Trump was the sitting president at the time.
Trump insisted the conclusion showed that he was “exonerated,” although that is not what Mueller found.
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