Pam Bondi, in Effort To Upend Jack Smith’s Legacy, Declares: ‘No More Special Counsels’

Attorney General Bondi’s antagonism toward special counsels underscores the decisiveness of her pivot away from the prosecutorial posture of her predecessor — and her intent to upend Special Counsel Jack Smith’s legacy. Ms. Bondi told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that special counsels “from here on out in our country will be legally appointed, and they won’t be done constantly like they have been done in the past. The weaponization of government will end. No more special counsels out there targeting anyone.”That policy would mark a pivot from the practice of Attorney General Garland, who appointed three special counsels — Mr. Smith to investigate President Trump, United States Attorney David Weiss to investigate Hunter Biden, and United States Attorney Richard Hur to scrutinize President Biden’s retention of classified documents.Ms. Bondi also had fulsome praise for a federal judge in south Florida, Aileen Cannon, who in July ruled that Mr. Garland’s appointment of Mr. Smith was unconstitutional because it lacked the imprimatur of the Senate or the ballast of pertinent statute. She dismissed the classified documents charges against Mr. Trump and two of his employees, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. The attorney general told Mr. Hannity that Judge Cannon is “brilliant,” another marked contrast from Mr. Garland, who told NBC News earlier this year that he would never have made such a “basic mistake about the law.” Judge Cannon, though, determined that he did. Mr. Smith appealed that ruling to the 11th United States Appeals Circuit. Mr. Trump’s victory over Vice President Harris in November ended that appeal. Prior to that victory, Judge Cannon’s name was floated as a possible candidate for the office that Ms. Bondi now holds. Days before Mr. Trump took the oath, Judge Cannon ruled that Mr. Smith’s final report on the Mar-a-Lago case could not be released. She wrote, “There is no ‘historical practice’ of providing Special Counsel reports to Congress, even on a limited basis, pending conclusion of criminal proceedings.”Days after that ruling was handed down, Mr. Trump ordered the Department of Justice to drop the cases against Messrs. De Oliveira and Nauta, meaning that the logic that informed Judge Cannon’s decision no longer applies. The special counsel regulations, though, deliver discretion over the report’s release to the attorney general — Ms. Bondi. It is unlikely that she would authorize the release of what could amount to highly sensitive materials in a case that never went to trial. Congressman Jamie Raskin last week reckoned that after the dismissal of the charges against Messrs. De Oliveira and Nauta there is “no conceivable basis upon which to continue withholding this essential report from the American people” because the “Department’s fair rationale for not previously releasing Volume Two of Special Counsel Smith’s report was to avoid any prejudice to President Trump’s co-defendants while the criminal case against them was still ongoing.”Ms. Bondi’s stance against special counsels comes days after she created a special squad to investigate links between the Department of Justice and the prosecutions of not only Mr. Smith but also those undertaken by New York County’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and the state’s attorney general, Letitia James.The attorney general’s memorandum creating the bespoke unit, titled “Restoring the Integrity and Credibility of the Department of Justice,” explains: “No one who has acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions has any cause for concern about efforts to root out corruption and weaponization.” Some of the DOJ’s most elite units have been detailed to the task, and Ms. Bondi will submit quarterly reports to the White House. A separate freedom of information request from a conservative legal group, Judicial Watch, has yielded a judicial order that the DOJ disclose any correspondence with Mr. Smith. A similar decision at Fulton County, in Georgia, could force the district attorney there, Fani Willis, to disclose any correspondence she had with Mr. Smith.Ms. Willis’s own special counsel, Nathan Wade, testified to Congress that he twice met with counsel for Mr. Biden’s White House, in May and November 2022. That’s more than a year before Mr. Garland appointed Mr. Smith to investigate Mr. Trump. Mr. Wade would eventually be forced to step aside from the case after it was disclosed that he had undertaken a secret romantic affair with Ms. Willis. She has subsequently been disqualified by the Georgia court of appeals, and has applied to that state’s supreme court. Ms. Bondi’s vow to eschew special counsels marks a departure from not only the previous administration, but also decades of precedent. Mr. Trump’s first administration saw the tenures of two special counsels, both connected to the fallout from alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election — Robert Mueller and John Durham. The Supreme Court, in the 1988 case Morrison v. Olson, held in an 8-to-1 decision that the predecessors to special counsels, called independent counsels, were constitutional. Only Justice Antonin Scalia dissented. The independent counsel statute, though, lapsed in 1999, unmourned by either party. It was replaced by the “Reno Regulations,” after one of Ms. Bondi’s predecessors, Janet Reno. Ms. Bondi’s vow to not repeat the disqualification experience undergone by Mr. Smith underscores the unusual nature of Mr. Smith’s background. Unlike previous special counsels, he never served as a United States attorney, meaning that he was never confirmed by the Senate. Mr. Garland tapped him for the position while he was prosecuting war crimes connected to the Kosovo war. That tribunal is provided for in Kosovo’s constitution.

Pam Bondi, in Effort To Upend Jack Smith’s Legacy, Declares: ‘No More Special Counsels’

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