OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
6:10pm – Thursday, December 19, 2024
An investigation has been launched by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) into whether Special Counsel Jack Smith's team violated legal guidelines in conducting its investigation into President-elect Trump.
In the letter obtained by the hillHouse Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said his office began the investigation in June 2023 after a prosecutor self-reported a complaint from a defense attorney involved in the Florida classified materials case. revealed that.
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Following multiple congressional letters calling for a review of Smith's work, Jordan said Smith's announcement that he was resigning from his position as special counsel opened an investigation into “allegations of attorney misconduct by Smith's office.” .
Prosecutors are required to report specific concerns from defense attorneys, which also requires OPR review.
“Thus, a self-referral does not indicate that misconduct necessarily occurred, but merely draws attention to the defense attorney's OPR allegations. In this case, the Office of the Special Counsel did not properly “We have alerted OPR to the misconduct alleged by defense attorneys in court,” wrote Jeffrey Ragsdale, a career Justice Department lawyer who was appointed to lead OPR.
The specific and detailed scope of OPR's investigation is unclear, but the letter's self-reference follows Jay Blatt, the lead prosecutor in the investigation, and references an earlier complaint from an attorney for one of Trump's co-defendants. There is.
Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Trump acolyte Walt Nauta, “accused Blatt of raising his interest in the attorney general nomination as a pressure tactic.'' hill Reported. After claiming the accusations were false, Blatt said he simply pointed out that Woodward sits on a committee that governs the nomination of judges.
“Bratt told Woodward this early in the meeting purely as a professional courtesy, but made it clear to Woodward that he understood that Woodward must have a good reputation. It was for demonstration purposes only. There was no other intention,” Smith's team wrote in court documents in August.
Prosecutors also argued that after Woodward learned his client had been targeted, he waited another nine months to file a report on the incident.
“A 30-year veteran federal prosecutor engaged in such arbitrary tactics in this sensitive investigation while meeting with three other prosecutors and in his first interaction with the defense. The idea that it does is nonsense,” they wrote.
Ragsdale noted that the completion of Smith's study triggered extensive review and evaluation.
“Such practice ensures that the OPR process is not improperly used to thwart ongoing prosecutions and avoids interference with the court's own oversight of the case. Once completed, it will also be possible to consider the allegations as a whole in the context of the entire litigation,” he wrote.
Jordan launched an investigation into Blatt personally, as well as Smith's crew and associates.
“We appreciate your confirmation of the public investigation into prosecutors in Jack Smith, but their refusal to take expedited investigative action will result in internal sanctions for these attorneys to resign from the department,” Jordan said. “I am concerned that they will be able to evade responsibility.”
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