'Bad-faith crusade': Trump team demands block of Jack Smith's 'extrajudicial' final report
President-elect Donald Trump is making a last-ditch effort to prevent special counsel Jack Smith from releasing his final report into his criminal cases against Trump.
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday Trump's attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro asserted that courts in Florida and Washington, D.C. dismissed Smith's "failed cases."
"Rather than acknowledging, as he must, President Trump's complete exoneration, Smith now seeks to disseminate an extrajudicial 'Final report' to perpetuate his false and discredited accusations," the letter said.
Trump's attorneys said Smith "executed" a "bad-faith crusade" on behalf of the Biden-Harris administration and said the report "merely continues Smith's politically-motivated attack." The letter also issued a threat, calling its release "imprudent and unlawful," saying Smith was wrongly appointed, that his report "violates fundamental norms regarding the presumption of innocence," and that its release violates the Presidential Transition Act as well as the presidential immunity doctrine.
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Trump's team also urged Garland to fire Smith.
"Because Smith has proposed an unlawful course of action, you must countermand his plan and remove him promptly," the attorneys said.
The judge overseeing Trump's election subversion case in November tossed the case at Smith's request, after he cited a long-standing Justice Department policy that bars the prosecution of a sitting president.
“The Department’s position is that the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated,” Smith told U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C. “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant.”
In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Smith's appointment was unconstitutional in overseeing the case into his taking of secret documents. In that case, Trump was accused of taking classified national defense documents from the White House after he left office and refusing to give them back to the government.