Attorney general talking about naming a special counsel
to investigate in two of the investigation into Donald Trump.
And we've just learned that it is Jack Smith who has a very impressive
biography, everything from a prosecutor here
in the states to covering war crime to investigating war crimes at The Hague.
Yeah.
Starting his public service almost 30 years ago, working
in the federal government
in both Democratic or under Democratic and Republican administrations.
Of course, we'll learn more about Jack Smith in the coming hours.
Let's go back now to our panel.
We have Evan, we have Jessica Schneider
and Ellie honing your thoughts about that.
And so when we talk about the career nonpolitical prosecutor
Jack Smith appears to be the very model of that notion.
He has worked, as you said, for decades
as a state and federal prosecutor and as a war crimes prosecutor.
There is no obvious, no apparent on the face of it, political leanings
one way or another.
This is really what the Justice Department typically
the vast majority of federal prosecutors in the Justice Department are.
They are not political actors.
They are not political appointees.
There are people who just come in and do the job and do the work.
And Jack Smith by all appearances, has done that for many, many years now.
So now he is going to have the first say he is going to have to get up
to speed on this investigation.
It's going to take him some time, but it is a well-developed investigation.
He's not starting from square one, and he will ultimately have
at least the initial call on do we indict or do we not now he will have
some level of independence, significant independence from Merrick Garland,
from the attorney general, really from everybody else at the Justice Department,
but ultimately Merrick Garland will retain that power to agree or disagree.
And if he disagrees to override whatever recommendation Mr.
Smith offers up.
Elliot Williams
CNN legal analyst, is joining us as well.
The attorney general said that the extraordinary circumstances demanded
this, and he said that he identified as a catalyst for this decision.
The announcement of the declaration of former President Trump
as a 2024 candidate.
And the inclination from the current president to run for reelection.
Your reaction to what we just heard from A.G.
Garland. Right.
You know, Victor, there really isn't a roadmap for a circumstance like this
because of how remarkable the circumstances are.
And this is that as the attorney general laid out, you have a former president
being investigated by the Justice Department.
If to do this by the book, to do to conduct these investigations
in a way that sort of the textbooks would say to do it, then, yes,
the attorney general had to appoint a special counsel here
because what you have to do is take out even the appearance of impropriety.
Now, look, we all know that.
And, you know, I was born yesterday
and within hours the record of Jack Smith is going to be picked apart.
And he will probably be seen
by some or criticized by some as being a partizan political hack or two.
We saw this play out with Robert Mueller several years ago.
But the simple fact is removing it from the chain of command to some extent,
as Elliot said, from the Justice Department, it was very valuable.
Look, one more point that I'd make here as an interesting bit of stagecraft.
The one person who was not there on that stage was Jack Smith, and that was to give
at least the sense of clarity that this is a separate individual
from outside the Justice Department who is coming to take this matter over.
And it's almost the best of all worlds,
at least in the Justice Department's perspective,
because no one as has been said, he gets all of the staff
that have been working on this for quite some time.
And no to a future president cannot really fire
a special counsel, except there's some extraordinary reason to do so.
Like, he literally shows up to work drunk or something like that.
The the attorney general just doesn't have the same latitude that he would
with a senior political appointee.
So yes, you know, I know there are people who might criticize
this decision, but but it's sort of had to be done regardless of
what the president's actions were previously.
Evan, you were reminding us that in terms of the histories of special counsels,
that actually the Robert Mueller investigation was wrapped up more quickly
than many others, including the John Durham one, which is ongoing and has been
I mean, you know, roughly well, two years now.
And three years. More than three years. Is that right?
So it's been going on for more than three years. Okay.
That's interesting.
And so any way to know I mean, since some of this work, as Ali
was just pointing out, has already been done
and the Department of Justice has been working on it.
Any idea about what the timeline would look like?
No. And I think one reason you guys, just
before the attorney general walked out, reported on on some of the
some of the reporting from from Kaitlan Collins,
who heard from inside the Trump camp that this is something they were dreading.
Look, I think part of the reason why is because of the nature of special counsel.
There's inside this building the idea of special counsel's.
And it's not very popular simply because, you know, you're out of the control
of the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, the direct
daily control.
And they have a way of just taking a life of their own.
Right.
And there is no easy way to shut it down once you get started.
And so what you're pointing out, Alisyn, you you raised it very early on
is exactly right.
That is the nature of them and that is the problematic.
Real quick, I want to just go back to something else you just mentioned.
I'll just say real quick that the the reason why Jack
Smith was not in the room today is actually he
he had an injury, apparently fell during a bike accident
and had some recent surgery or some kind of medical attention
which means that he could not be present today at this announcement.
But we expect and,
you know, he's already now the special counsel as of this moment.
So he is now going to be running this investigation.
And back to the point that you were making, look,
it does have a way of of taking on a life of its own.
They they have kind of really unlimited budget.
And that's part of the problem with them.
And why I think there was some hesitation upstairs about naming a special counsel.
The other part of this is that, you know, they scoured they spent weeks
trying to think of a former judge,
a former DOJ official, somebody who could pass the test.
And they finally landed on a war crimes prosecutor,
somebody who I'm told is a political independent,
somebody who's going to pass that smell test that I'm sure
Trump and Republican Partizans are going to be doing right at this moment.
Trying to figure out whether there's anything in his past
that might indicate that he is a partizan or that could, you know, obviously
give them reason to have pause about how this investigation
is going to be conducted Victor and Alisyn,
however, I'm sure it wasn't just a finding someone who could take the job,
but someone who would, considering all that is like that
coming for them now that they're going to head up this investigation.
Jessica Schneider, let me come to you on what we heard from the attorney general.
He says he's confident
that the appointment will not slow down the investigations we've heard.
I also discussed that with Evan.
But what's the ramp up time he's coming into this.
There is a team already established.
He's got to, as we say, a news read in to
to get to a point where he can lead this investigation.
Yeah.
Two very wide ranging investigation
that have been ongoing for quite some time to Mar a Lago.
One, not as quite as long as the investigation into January 6th here.
But despite those two wide ranging
investigations, the new special counsel, Jack Smith, he's actually been given
fairly specific instructions as at least as it pertains to January six.
You know, the attorney general mentioned it at least twice
and when he came out to talk to reporters, you know, he said
that he'll be looking into the potential interference
into the transfer of power, the certification of the vote in 20, 20
So that January 6th investigation that's been ongoing now for almost two years.
It has many different facets.
The rioters, all of those rioters who have been arrested and charged.
We're now seeing the Oath Keepers trial that will continue to progress
under the purview of the U.S.
attorney here in D.C.
But it's this very specific question about interference into the transfer of power.
The certification in particular.
Our team, led by Evan Perez, has reported that it goes to the heart of these
this fake electoral scam where these Trump supporters were fake electors.
They wanted to try to disrupt the elect electoral count here.
So that's the primary focus of that facet of the investigation.
But then the Mar a Lago documents investigation, we saw that
peek with the FBI search to Mar a Lago back in August,
but that has been ongoing for several months as well.
So you're right, it will take time for this new special counsel to get up
to speed here and the big question is how quickly will he act?
Will this be a wide ranging investigation
or a long investigation, as we've seen with John Durham, Durham,
especially complicating things, the fact that the former
president will be running for president again.
At the same time, this investigation is ongoing from the special counsel.
So a lot of a lot of outstanding questions here.