The Attorney General and Secretary of Justice of the United States, Merrick Garland, appointed a special lawyer this Friday to reinforce the investigations against Donald Trump and clothe them with the greatest possible independence.
The chosen one is the prestigious jurist Jack Smith, who in 2018 became chief prosecutor of the Special Tribunal in The Hague for war crimes committed in Kosovo. Previously, he was responsible for the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity section.
Smith will be in charge of directing and supervising the investigations of the FBI and the Prosecutor’s Office against the former Republican president in relation to the concealment of top-secret documents in his residence and private club in Mar-A-Lago, Florida, and with his role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Smith’s appointment, a decision that had been speculated on for a few weeks, comes three days after Trump announced his 2024 presidential candidacy.
It is evident that Merrick Garland wanted to avoid at all costs that the campaign or pre-campaign for those elections began to heat up without him having taken a significant step that can also be interpreted as progress towards the possible imputation of the former president.
But, above all, the appointment of the special counsel, comes to face the accusations of partiality and “politicization” of justice, of course already launched by Trump and his, in criminal cases that can lead to the first prosecution. criminal of a President of the United States.
