Smith special counsel investigation
investigation into former U.S. president Donald Trump
The Smith special counsel investigation was a special counsel investigation into efforts by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election of Joe Biden that was opened by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18, 2022. Garland appointed Jack Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor, to lead the independent investigations. Smith was tasked with investigating Trump's role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack and Trump's mishandling of government records, including classified documents.
Smith moved quickly to advance his investigations, assembling a team of at least twenty DOJ prosecutors, and called witnesses for grand jury testimony, issued subpoenas to election officials in multiple states, and asked a federal judge to hold Trump in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena.
On June 8, 2023, a grand jury in the Southern Florida U.S. District Court indicted Trump on 37 felony counts, including charges of willful retention of national security material, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy, relating to his removal and retention of presidential materials from the White House after his presidency ended. Thirty-one of the counts fell under the Espionage Act.
On August 1, 2023, a grand jury for the District of Columbia U.S. District Court issued a four-count indictment of Trump for conspiracy to defraud the United States under Title 18 of the United States Code, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, and conspiracy against rights under the Enforcement Act of 1870 for his conduct following the 2020 presidential election through the January 6 Capitol attack.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in both indictments. Trials were scheduled but never held.
On July 15, 2024, Trump-Appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents prosecution against Trump, siding with the former president's argument that Smith was unlawfully appointed.
The public source identifies “Smith special counsel investigation” as investigation into former U.S. president Donald Trump. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Smith, special and counsel.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q115907896. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 2022, 2023 and 1870.
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