Jack Smith, the Justice Department’s Special Counsel investigating former President Donald Trump has cost taxpayers more than $23 million, new expenditure reports revealed.AP
Published January 6, 2024
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s two investigations into former President Donald Trump have cost taxpayers more than $23 million — while the Justice Department probe into President Biden’s classified documents case has so far cost about $6.4 million.
The figures, revealed in DOJ expenditure reports released Friday, account for the spending by the respective special counsels between April 1, 2023 and Sept. 30, 2023, as well as costs incurred by other Justice Department agencies related to the probes.
Smith’s statement of expenditures shows the special counsel has spent more than $7.3 million on compensations and benefits for personnel, travel, rent, supplies, printing and contractual services in the Trump probes.
Other DOJ agencies have incurred expenses totaling $7.2 million assisting Smith with his investigations into the 77-year-old former president, including by providing investigative support analysts and a security detail for the special counsel “when warranted,” the report states.
The special counsel’s first expenditure report, released in July, showed that Smith and other DOJ agencies had spent more than $9 million on the Trump probes from Nov. 18, 2022 through March 31, 2023, putting the known total amount spent on his investigations at more than $23 million.
Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland last November, has led the investigations into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and his alleged efforts to interfere with the results of the 2020 election. Grand juries in Florida and Washington, DC, have brought indictments against the former president as a result of both investigations.
In contrast to the Trump probes, the special counsel appointed last January to investigate Biden’s classified documents scandal only spent $2.8 million between April 1, 2023 and Sept. 30, 2023, another DOJ report released Friday showed.
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SOURCE: www.nypost.com
RELATED: Jack Smith Spends $9 Million More Investigating Trump Than Special Counsel Probing Biden
Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks in Washington, on Aug. 1, 2023. (Right) Former President Donald Trump attends his trial in New York State Supreme Court in New York City, on Dec. 7, 2023. (Drew Angerer, David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
Published January 6, 2024
Jack Smith, the special counsel leading two investigations—alleged election interference and classified document mishandling—into former President Donald Trump, has spent $9.3 million more than the special counsel investigating President Joe Biden’s alleged document mishandling probe.
Earlier expense reports for the two special counsels—Nov. 18, 2022, through March 31, 2023, for Mr. Smith and Jan. 12, 2023, through March 31, 2023, for Mr. Hur—round out the picture.
The reports show that Mr. Smith spent $7.3 million in the six months ending Sept. 30, 2023, on his two investigations into President Trump, raising his total expenses to nearly $12.7 million.
By comparison, Mr. Hur’s investigation into President Biden’s classified document case cost $2.8 million between April and September of last year. In the previous period between Jan. 12, 2023 (the day of Mr. Hur’s appointment) and March 31, 2023, his office spent around $616,000, bringing the total to roughly $3.4 million.
That means Mr. Smith has, to date, outspent Mr. Hur by over $9 million, with the disclosures coming a day after President Trump’s attorneys complained that Mr. Smith had spent many millions prosecuting the former president.
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SOURCE: www.epochtimes.com
RELATED:
Published January 6, 2024
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s big plan to prove links between Donald Trump and Jan. 6 rioters is reportedly going away.
Smith, who was recently hit with a sanctions motion in the federal election subversion case, previously announced in court documents his intention to use Google location data to track MAGA rioters from Trump’s speech all the way into the Capitol.
But that plan is not going to be around for long, according to the Washington Post’s Saturday report.
“Special counsel Jack Smith has a plan for how to illustrate Donald Trump’s influence over the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” the article states. “Prosecutors will show a map of people gathered around the Ellipse to hear Trump say, ‘we’re going to the Capitol’ to ‘fight like hell,’ then follow those supporters in real time as they head down Pennsylvania Avenue to where lawmakers were certifying President Biden’s victory.”
The piece continues:
“That visualization, detailed in court filings in Trump’s federal election subversion case in D.C., was created with data from Google. But the tool that has pitted law enforcement investigative priorities against personal privacy concerns soon won’t be so accessible. The company will no longer store location history that was used to identify hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and to prosecute the man those rioters hoped to keep in power.”
According to the Post, law enforcement agencies have used so-called geofence warrants “to pull information from smartphone owners who use ‘Google location history,’ which regularly records a person’s location through a combination of cell tower, internet protocol, wireless, GPS and Bluetooth data.”
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SOURCE: www.rawstory.com
