The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday appointed an independent prosecutor to oversee criminal investigations into former President Donald Trump’s withholding of national defense information, as well as the assault on Capitol Hill.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has named Jack Smith to lead these investigations. A former chief prosecutor of the Special Tribunal in The Hague, Smith was in charge of assessing war crimes committed during the war in Kosovo — from February 1998 to June 1999 — according to CNN.
Smith must now investigate the possible criminal implications Trump could face after an FBI raid uncovered in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida a remarkable amount of classified documents related to the defense of the United States.
Likewise, the independent prosecutor will also analyze the role of the former president in the ignominious afternoon of January 6, 2021, when a mob of ultra-nationalist hotheads stormed the Capitol in Washington to try to stop the transfer of power to the newly elected president, Joe Biden, considering that the elections were rigged.
According to witnesses consulted by the aforementioned U.S. television network, Smith’s main objective in leading both investigations is to gather more information and bring the testimony of witnesses before a federal grand jury in the coming weeks.
