The Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency, opened an investigation into Smith over allegations of illegal political activity, according to a report from The Associated Press, NBC News, and other US news outlets on Saturday.
Trump and his Republican allies, including Senator Tom Cotton, have accused Smith of breaking the Hatch Act, a federal law that forbids some public officials from running for office, without providing any evidence of wrongdoing.
In a social media post this week, Cotton claimed that Smith had “instrumentalized the law” against Trump in the run-up to the US presidential election in 2024.
On Wednesday, Cotton wrote on X, “I’ve asked the Office of Special Counsel to look into his actions that were likely indecently against the law.”
In November of this year, former Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel for Trump.
He was the Republican leader’s alleged mishandling of classified government documents and his unsuccessful bid to overturn the 2020 election’s outcome in a federal court case against him and Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump claimed that US prosecutors were motivated by political reasons and denied any wrongdoing.
After Trump was re-elected in November 2024, which would have shielded him from prosecution under a well-established Justice Department practice, Smith ultimately dropped the cases, neither of which had ever been brought to trial.
Soon before Trump’s January inauguration, Smith abruptly resigned from the department.
In a report released at the time, US prosecutors claimed that Trump would have been found guilty of “criminal efforts to retain power” following the 2020 election if he had not won the presidential election in 2024.
Source: Aljazeera
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