Washington – Special Counsel Jack Smith’s two investigations into former President Donald Trump cost more than $9 million in the first five months after Smith was tapped in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the Ongoing Justice Department investigations related to Trump, according to expense reports released Friday.
Smith is investigating efforts to nullify the 2020 presidential election and Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified White House records after he left office. When Smith took over, both investigations were already underway, and in June prosecutors obtained a indictment against trump and his longtime helper — Walt Nauta — for an alleged scheme to withhold national defense information and obstruct federal investigators.
Trump pleaded not guilty in Florida last month to 37 counts against him – including 31 charges of unlawful possession of sensitive government documents – and Nauta pleaded not guilty on Thursday after weeks of delay. Nauta, Trump’s former White House valet, is accused of working with the former president to move and hide boxes of documents with classified markings inside Mar-a-Lago and of having lied to investigators about his knowledge of the files.
In total, Smith’s two investigations directly cost $5,428,579 in funding from the Justice Department’s permanent, indefinite funding for independent counsel investigations, as mandated by legislation authorized by Congress between November 18, 2022 and on March 31, 2023. This included more than $2.6 million for staff compensation. and benefits, according to the disclosure, and about $1.8 million for contracted services such as litigation and IT support.
An additional $3.8 million was spent on FBI and US Marshal Service personnel connected to the two Smith probes for investigative matters and protection details. Although they are not required to disclose these expenses in reports, they were included in Friday’s statements.
Since his appointment, Smith has spoken publicly only once — after indicting the former South Florida District president in June. “Our laws that protect national defense information are essential to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced,” Smith said at the time. “We have a set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone.”
The former president criticized the investigation as politically motivated and maintained that he had done nothing wrong.
Smith’s prosecutorial team is also investigating the events surrounding the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and efforts to nullify the 2020 presidential election. Grand juries are being convened in Washington, D.C., to hear evidence, and in recent weeks, investigators have met with numerous witnesses, including Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Investigators have been looking at a number of leads in the matter and are focusing on an alleged sham election scheme in which the former president’s supporters worked to uncertify Electoral College votes through an alternative group of representatives of the Swing state pledging to back Trump, sources familiar with the probe say. State officials in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia have spoken with investigators or complied with subpoenas in recent months.
The expense reports were released as part of a biannual Justice Department submission to Congress detailing the cost of ongoing investigations of congressional special advocates. The disclosure also contained information related to the investigations of Special Counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed by Garland in January to take over the investigation into President Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents from his time as vice president. and senator – and former special counsel John Durham, who earlier this year completed his investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. According to reports, Hur’s investigation cost over $1.1 million between January 12, 2023 and March 31, 2023, as did the final stages of Durham’s investigation from October 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023.
CBS News first reported that approximately 10 documents marked classified were discovered by Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys in his vice president’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement on November 2, 2022, and turned over to the National Archives and Archives. Administration.
Days later, the Archives notified the Justice Department, and on November 9, the FBI began an assessment to determine whether classified information had been mishandled in violation of federal law, and a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney was assigned to lead the investigation before Hur. appointment.
Subsequent searches of the President’s Wilmington, Delaware residence by his legal team and later by the FBI yielded a “small number” of documents in his garage dating back to Mr. Biden’s time in the Obama administration and six other articles with classified markings from his time as vice president and as a senator, the president’s attorney confirmed at various times earlier this year.
In addition to the FBI’s 1 p.m. search of the president’s Wilmington home, federal investigators also conducted an hours-long examination of his Rehoboth Beach residence, but no additional documents were found, the attorney said. of Mr. Biden at the time.
Hur’s ongoing investigation has cost $615,962 in expenses from the Congressionally-authorized Independent Counsel Fund and another $572,185 in additional costs like FBI and US Marshal support. Over $340,000 was spent on staff compensation and benefits and approximately $225,000 was spent on rent, communications and utilities.
Durham, the Trump-era special counsel tasked with examining the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, has concluded his years-long review into the federal government’s conduct over earlier this year and found that the investigators “had not fulfilled their important mission of strict control”. fidelity to the law” concerning the events of the 2016 campaign.
His nearly 300-page report criticized “confirmation bias” at the FBI and found the basis for a full investigation into whether Trump’s campaign coordination with Russia in 2016 was “seriously flawed.”
Durham testified to his findings last month and told Congress that using the so-called Steele Dossier – an opposition memo that included unproven charges compiled by a former British intelligence officer – to obtain warrants investigation was inappropriate.
The four-year investigation into Durham resulted in charges against three people and resulted in a guilty plea and two full acquittals at trial.
According to the statement of expenses released Friday, between October and March, the Durham office spent more than $1.1 million, including $544,0444 on compensation and benefits and about $96,000 on travel expenses.
In total, since his appointment as special counsel in October 2020, Durham has spent approximately $9.5 million on combined independent attorney funds and related components like the FBI and US Marshals, according to expense reports. of the Ministry of Justice.
During his tenure as special counsel investigating Russian election interference and alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Robert Mueller spent about $30 million, according to expense reports. His investigation – which ultimately found no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia – resulted in numerous indictments and convictions at trial and concluded that Russians led a systematic effort to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. .
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