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Special prosecutor Jack Smith resigned from his position at the Justice Department on Friday, Fox News has learned.
The resignation, which had been expected since President-elect Trump was elected in November, was quietly announced in the footnote of a court filing on Saturday.
“The Special Prosecutor completed his work and submitted his final confidential report on January 7, 2025 and separated from the Department on January 10,” the memo said.
Smith was appointed by the Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to investigate the 2020 election interference case against Trump related to January 6 and Mar-a-Lago Classified documents case. In 2017, Smith served as acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee during the first Trump administration.
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In November, special counsel Jack Smith moved to dismiss charges he brought against Trump in a case alleging Trump’s interference in the certification of the 2020 election. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The news came as the country waits for Smith’s report into the election interference case to be released. A recent court filing showed that Garland plans to release the investigative report soon, possibly before Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
On Friday, a federal appeals court judge ruled against blocking release from Smith’s report.
“As I have made clear with respect to every special counsel who has served since I took office, I am committed to making public as much of the special counsel’s report as possible, consistent with legal requirements and Department policy,” he wrote. Garland in a recent letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
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Jack Smith speaks during a press conference in Washington, DC, in 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Once Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Smith filed motions to close his cases against the president-elect. In late November, Smith asked a judge to drop charges against President-elect Trump in DC’s case against him.
Before asking that the case be dropped, Smith filed a motion to cancel all deadlines in the 2020 election interference case against Trump in Washington, D.C., a decision that was widely expected after Trump’s victory. After the cases were dropped, Trump responded to the move by arguing that the investigations “should never have been started.”
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The special counsel’s resignation comes as his report is scheduled to be released, possibly before President-elect Trump takes office on Jan. 20. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“These cases, like every other case I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been filed,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “It was a political hijack and a low point in our country’s history that something like this could have happened, and yet I persevered, against all odds, and WON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.
