Special Counsel Jack Smith, as Townhall has been covering this week, has dropped his cases against President-elect Donald Trump, with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals agreeing to end the classified documents case. As Katie highlighted earlier on Friday, though, there's still a need for accountability. Further, Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland may not be completely done with Trump, given that they're still looking to release a report.
The New York Times had actually teased some coverage about Smith two weeks ago, noting that he planned to resign before Trump took office. There was also mention of a report for Smith to complete and Garland to release, though.
Following Smith's moves to drop the charges, CNN reported on some key "takeaways," including a section on "What will we learn next?" As that section read:
Before Trump takes his oath of office next year, Smith plans to release a final report as required by law on his investigations into Trump, a source familiar with the matter tells CNN.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to publicly release it, as he has with past special counsel reports.
But it’s unclear how much new information would be included, especially in the election subversion case, where Smith recently filed hundreds of pages of legal arguments and evidence gathered for that prosecution.
Newsweek also covered a CNN interview, providing more details about the report:
Special counsel Jack Smith plans to release his final report on the federal investigations into former President Donald Trump before Inauguration Day on January 20, according to a CNN report citing a source close to the matter.
The report is expected to detail Smith's findings on key cases involving Trump, including allegations of election subversion and mishandling of classified documents. Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to publicly release the special counsel report.
"Historically, these special counsel reports are quite detailed," CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Tuesday morning in an interview with Jim Acosta. " I think this will be Jack Smith's last and best chance to tell his story in both cases. He's already done that to some extent through his indictments and court filings, but this will be it — this will be the historical record."
...
Smith's comprehensive final report is anticipated to serve as both a conclusive document of the investigations and a reference for possible future actions. However, it remains uncertain how much new information will be included, particularly in the election subversion case.
Smith also did not seek to dismiss the charges against Trump with prejudice, meaning a Democratic administration to indict Trump once more, a move which Bonchie at our sister site of RedState highlighted for being particularly "petty," while also highlighting how Americans don't care about these charges against Trump anymore, emphasizing that "no one cares about this anymore. If any of this mattered, Kamala Harris would have won the election."
While one could say that Americans didn't care about the cases against Trump, to look at it in a more nuanced light, they also didn't care about it in the way that the Harris-Walz campaign and other top Democrats wanted them to. In fact, this lawfare against Trump, as well as other political opponents of the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ), including concerned parents at schoolboard meetings and peaceful pro-lifers praying and protesting outside of abortion facilities, looks to have even backfired against them.
To think, Harris even repeatedly tried to claim, including during the September 10 debate against Trump, that it was her opponent who was going to "weaponize" the DOJ against his political opponents when he had already done so.
Especially if Pam Bondi is confirmed as Trump's Attorney General, much-needed accountability could very likely be coming to the DOJ with the new administration.