Merrick Garland Appoints Special Counsel to Mull Charges for Trump
![TOPSHOT - Former US President Donald Trump speaks at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 15, 2022. - Donald Trump pulled the trigger on a third White House run on November 15, setting the stage for a bruising Republican nomination battle after a poor midterm election showing by his hand-picked candidates weakened his grip on the party. Trump filed his official candidacy papers with the US election authority moments before he was due to publicly announce his candidacy. (Photo by ALON SKUY / AFP) (Photo by ALON SKUY/AFP via Getty Images)](https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/themes/vip/pmc-rollingstone-2022/assets/public/lazyload-fallback.gif)
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed former Department of Justice Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith as special counsel to determine whether criminal charges stemming from Justice Department investigations should be brought against Donald Trump.
Garland announced in a Friday briefing that Smith will determine if “any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or with the certification of electoral college vote held on or about Jan. 6” and will “conduct the investigation involving classified documents and other presidential records as well as the possible obstruction of that investigation.”
Trump responded about as expected. “I am not going to accept it … the Republican Party has to stand up and fight,” Trump said in an exclusive interview with Fox News. “I have been proven innocent for six years on everything — from fake impeachments to [former special counsel Robert] Mueller who found no collusion, and now I have to do it more? It is not acceptable. It is so unfair. It is so political.”
The DOJ has been probing multiple avenues of Trump’s conduct both as president and as a private citizen. Earlier this year the DOJ stated that the investigation into Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol would continue regardless of Trump seeking reelection in 2024. The department is also investigating if Trump acted improperly when he retained hundreds of classified documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago following his departure from office. Some of the documents contained highly classified and top secret material, including intelligence related to several foreign nations’ nuclear programs.
“I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland said in announcing Smith’s appointment. “Such an appointment underscores the department’s commitment to both Independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters. It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously and make decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.”
The announcement comes less than a week after the former president announced his campaign for the 2024 presidential election. Rolling Stone previously reported that Trump had told advisers he needs to retake the White House in order to use the powers of the office to avoid, or completely squash, the DOJ’s investigation. Garland stated in his announcement that the decision to appoint a special council was in part spurred by “recent developments including the former president’s announcement that he is a candidate for president in the next election, and the sitting president stated intention to be a candidate as well.”
As reported by Rolling Stone in July, Trump’s lawyers have already begun preparing potential legal strategies should the Justice Department’s investigations result in criminal charges.