Jack Smith, the special counsel who pursued two federal prosecutions of Donald J. Trump, plans to finish his work and resign along with other members of his team before Mr. Trump takes office in January, people familiar with his plans said.
Mr. Smith’s goal, they said, is to not leave any significant part of his work for others to complete and to get ahead of the president-elect’s promise to fire him within “two seconds” of being sworn in.
Mr. Smith, who since taking office two years ago has operated under the principle that not even a powerful ex-president is above the law, now finds himself on the defensive as he rushes to wind down a pair of complex investigations slowed by the courts and ultimately made moot by Mr. Trump’s electoral victory.
Mr. Smith’s office is still drawing up its plan for how to end the cases, and it is possible that unforeseen circumstances — such as judicial rulings or decisions by other government officials — could alter his intended timeline. But Mr. Smith is trying to finish his work and leave before Mr. Trump returns to power, the people familiar with his plans said.
The election’s outcome spelled the end of the federal cases against Mr. Trump, since Justice Department policy has long held that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for crimes. A Supreme Court ruling this summer significantly expanded the scope of official presidential conduct that cannot be prosecuted even after leaving office.
As he prepares for his last act as special counsel, Mr. Smith’s ultimate audience will not be a jury, but the public.
Department regulations call for him to file a report summarizing his investigation and decisions — a document that may stand as the final accounting from a prosecutor who filed extensive charges against a former president but never got his cases to trial.
It is not clear how quickly he can finish this work, leaving uncertain whether it could be made public before the Biden administration leaves office. But several officials said he has no intention of lingering any longer than he has to, and has told career prosecutors and F.B.I. agents on his team who are not directly involved in that process that they can start planning their departures over the next few weeks, people close to the situation said.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel moves.
Mr. Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor, is now a target of pro-Trump Republicans who portray him as the embodiment of a Democratic effort to use “lawfare,” the so-called weaponization of the Justice Department, to destroy Mr. Trump.
On Friday, Republican lawmakers told Justice Department officials who had worked on the Trump cases to preserve all of their communications for investigators. That is a sure sign that a new balance of power in Washington will make Mr. Smith among those being hunted by congressional investigators and others.
That same day, Mr. Smith’s team filed a court document taking the first step to wind down his two-pronged prosecution of Mr. Trump. The prosecutor asked for and received a monthlong pause to the filing deadlines in his case in Washington charging Mr. Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Smith said he needed until Dec. 2 to decide exactly how to wind down that case and his other Trump prosecution, in which Mr. Trump has been charged with mishandling classified national security documents after leaving office and obstructing efforts to retrieve them. The documents case was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon of the Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla. That decision is currently being appealed in federal court in Atlanta.
Referring to the fact that the defendant would soon take office again as president, Mr. Smith said in Friday’s filing that he needed a month “to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”
The type of special counsel report being prepared by Mr. Smith and his team is technically supposed to be directed to the attorney general.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has repeatedly signaled he intends to release such reports to the public, although with some redactions to comply with broader department rules.
In some cases, the findings contained in special counsel reports can be revelatory. In February, the special counsel Robert K. Hur’s report concluded that criminal charges were not warranted for President Biden for retaining classified documents from his time as vice president, but offered a unflattering assessment of Mr. Biden’s memory and cognitive capacity.
Justice Department regulations require a special counsel’s report to explain why the prosecutor decided to file the charges they did, and why they decided not to file any other charges they considered.
But like much of Mr. Smith’s work involving Mr. Trump, this step is fraught with both technical and practical challenges that could make the report significantly different — and shorter — from the lengthy tomes produced by other recent special counsels. It also unlikely to contain much in the way of new or revelatory disclosures.
Mr. Smith, who has been the subject of round-the-clock protection after receiving death threats since taking over, has already described much of the evidence and legal theories behind the election obstruction indictment. Since he filed two separate and lengthy indictments last year against Mr. Trump, he has supplemented that record with scores of court filings elaborating on the allegations.
One potential wrinkle for the filing and release of Mr. Smith’s report is that it may have to undergo a careful review by U.S. intelligence agencies for any classified information. That can be a lengthy process. Intelligence agencies took weeks to review Mr. Hur’s report.
But in the case of Mr. Smith’s final report, most of that vetting has already been done, so officials expect that step to take little time.
The big question now, assuming Mr. Smith finishes the report on his current schedule, is whether Mr. Garland will release the findings before he leaves office, or defer the release to the Trump team, which might not make its contents public.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Garland declined to comment.
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