\n<\/p>\n
\n\tPresident Donald Trump\u2019s administration is investigating former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led two criminal investigations into Trump during the Biden administration, on the supposed basis that Smith\u2019s actions may have been politically motivated.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe U.S. Office of Special Counsel is reportedly investigating Smith over a possible violation of the Hatch Act, a law that aims to make sure that federal workers are nonpartisan and avoid political activities. Smith investigated Trump over alleged his mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including his role in fomenting the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe news was first reported by The New York Post <\/em>on Friday night and confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.<\/p>\n \n\tSmith\u2019s federal prosecution of Trump for election subversion was delayed by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court as it weighed \u2014 and then largely granted \u2014 the then-former president\u2019s sweeping claims to immunity from prosecution for acts he committed in office.<\/p>\n \n\tSmith dropped the Department of Justice\u2019s investigations into Trump in November and resigned from his position in January, shortly before Trump took office. Around that time, Joe Biden\u2019s Justice Department released Smith\u2019s report on his investigation into Trump\u2019s election interference.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAs set forth in the original and superseding indictments, when it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power,\u201d the report read.<\/p>\n \n\tTrump has been plotting his revenge against Smith and his team for years, looking for ways to punish them and undo their investigations. He never hid it: \u201cThe precedent on doing what they did, with the weaponization, using the DOJ and the FBI to go after their political opponents, that is so bad,\u201d Trump said last year. \u201cThat means I can do it too.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFollowing Trump\u2019s win, members of Smith\u2019s team quickly moved to retain lawyers in case Trump followed through on his public pledge of \u201cretribution.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tSen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a Trump ally who called for an investigation into Smith earlier this week, celebrated news of the investigation.\u201cI appreciate the Office of Special Counsel taking this seriously and launching an investigation into Jack Smith\u2019s conduct. No one is above the law. Jack Smith\u2019s actions were clearly driven to hurt President Trump\u2019s election, and Smith should be held fully accountable,\u201d Cotton told The Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tIn February, the Trump\u2019s attorney general, Pam Bondi,\u00a0 formed the Weaponization Working Group, and decreed that it investigate, among other things, \u201cweaponization by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff, who spent more than $50 million targeting President Trump,\u201d as well as the officials involved in the 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago related to classified documents that Trump had reportedly taken from the White House.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHatch Act penalties include debarment from federal employment for up to five years and a civil penalty of up to $1,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tTrump\u2019s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel is 28-year-old Paul Ingrassia, a political commentator who was admitted to the bar in 2024. Ingrassia has apparently associated with both white supremacist Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, who has been charged with rape and sex trafficking in multiple countries. In November 2024, Ingrassia said Smith should be jailed \u2014 along with every other \u201ccommunist who\u2019s waged relentless lawfare against Trump.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPresident Trump wants to appoint Mr. Ingrassia because he knows that this nominee will treat treasonous, secessionist rhetoric as acceptable political discourse; reward extremism instead of condemning it; and work to tear down, not build up, the democratic institutions we have sworn to protect,\u201d top Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform and Judiciary committees wrote in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Donald Trump\u2019s administration is investigating former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led two criminal investigations into Trump during the Biden administration, on the supposed basis that Smith\u2019s actions may have been politically motivated. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel is reportedly investigating Smith over a possible violation of the Hatch Act, a law that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[273,7474,1676,7475,7476,2325,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-13794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-admin","9":"tag-investigating","10":"tag-jack","11":"tag-jan","12":"tag-prosecutor","13":"tag-smith","14":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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