Jack Smith

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Special Counsel Jack Smith spent more than $5 million in the first four months of the federal investigations into former President Donald Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents and his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Statements of expenditures released by the Department of Justice on Friday showed that Smith's office spent $5.4 million between his appointment last year through this past March. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to lead the two separate probes in November 2022.

The bulk of that spending — more than $4 million — was spent on salaries and benefits for staff working on his team and payments to contractors for services, including litigation and investigative support, IT services and transcriptions.

The remaining amount was spent on rent, equipment, supplies and printing costs, the documents showed.

The expenditures also showed that other components of the Department of Justice spent more than $3.8 million to support Smith's office. This included "hours worked by agents and investigative support analysts, as well as the cost of protective details for the Special Counsel when warranted," the document said.

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, testified before the grand jury investigating the aftermath of the 2020 election and the actions of the then-president and others, a source familiar with the testimony confirmed to CNN.

Former Trump aide Hope Hicks also went before the grand jury, according to two sources familiar, testifying in early June.

Some of the questions being asked in the grand jury were about whether Donald Trump was told he had lost the election, according to one of the sources familiar.

CNN also previously reported that Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House communications director who is now a CNN political commentator, met with federal prosecutors, sitting for a formal, voluntary interview as part of the ongoing special counsel probe, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

Investigators from special counsel Jack Smith’s team have also met with several election officials from key battleground states who were targeted by Trump and his allies as part of their bid to upend Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the 2020 presidential election.

As CNN has reported, prosecutors met with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger late last month, and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Arizona GOP official Rusty Bowers revealed to CNN that they have been interviewed by prosecutors in recent months.

Benson told CNN on Wednesday that one of the areas investigators seemed focused on was “the impact of the misinformation on [election workers’] lives and the threats that emerged from that from various sources.”

It's taking so long ONLY because they want to make absolutely certain of an appeal-proof conviction.

Although if they take long enough, Donnie-Boy may choke on a cheeseburger and make it all moot.

BREAKING: Trump says he has just been issued a TARGET LETTER from Jack Smith and the grand jury for his role on January 6th.

Unless there are enough cult members to re-elect him and then watch him manipulate the US justice system to the nth degree to keep himself out of jail. That would be.. oh my God level not good.

The former number two official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has offered a dire prediction about America’s future should Donald Trump or another like-minded Republican succeed in winning next year’s presidential election, according to a new book by a former Trump administration homeland security aide.

In Blowback, author Miles Taylor recounts an October 2020 conversation he had with Sue Gordon, a 25-year US intelligence community veteran who served as the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence from 2017 to 2019, shortly after news broke that the FBI had disrupted a plot by Michigan-based right-wing extremists to kidnap Wolverine State governor Gretchen Whitmer.

According to a copy of the book obtained by The Independent ahead of its Tuesday release, Taylor recalls how the news of the kidnapping plot prompted him to telephone Ms Gordon, who he says spent “decades” at the CIA monitoring foreign governments for signs of instability, and ask the former deputy DNI how America’s “democratic stability” would be impacted by a second term in the White House for Mr Trump or a “Maga successor”.

Taylor said Ms Gordon’s reply came “in the language of a seasoned intelligence analyst” who speaks “based on data from sources in the field and the uncertainty level of information they don’t have”.

He added that she told him how she would “assess with ‘low confidence’ that the United States reaches its three hundredth birthday” — the projected 2076 tricentennial anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence from Great Britain — in “any recognisable form”.

“People don’t trust government institutions anymore or each other, and when the world gets tumultuous, they’re more open to authoritarianism,” she said.

Continuing, Taylor writes that Ms Gordon told him her reason for pessimism about the long-term viability of the US as a functioning democracy stems from the follow-on effects of four more years of Donald Trump — or someone acting with the same malevolence towards governmental institutions — atop the US executive branch.

He said she told him that she does not believe a “Next Trump” would successfully smash through “every democratic guardrail,” but would “stoke unprecedented division and set off a slow turn towards despotism” in the US by “attempting” to further erode democratic norms and bring nominally independent institutions under his or her thumb.

“That process can take decades to unfold. If history is any guide, though, it might come suddenly to a head, with the literal pull of a trigger — and the odds of that happening in the not-too-distant future are historically high,” he wrote.

Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Trump-era Department of Homeland Security for the first three years of Mr Trump’s administration but is better known as the formerly anonymous author of a New York Times op-ed about “resistance” to the then-president inside his own government, told The Independent in a phone interview that he fears a repeat of the January 6 attack on the Capitol — but worse — should Mr Trump lose next year’s presidential election.

Echoing Ms Gordon’s prediction of a long-term breakdown of the American democratic system, Taylor said the possibility of “low-level civil conflict” touched off by Mr Trump or another Republican is “higher now than it even was in that post election period in 2020”.

“The muscle memory for those extremist movements has now been solidified. The networks are closer. And ... since that time, many more people, otherwise kind of normal people in small town America, have really taken the stolen election lies, QAnon, and great replacement theory as gospel, and the polling shows that a majority of your everyday Republicans believe those lies,” he said. “Add to that the fact that the country is more armed now than at any point in its history ... it is a powder keg.”

Taylor added that his fears of violence go beyond a repeat of what happened in Washington nearly three years ago, pointing to the aborted plot against Ms Whitmer, the Michigan governor, as an example of what could be in store for the future. He told The Independent that he feels “the conditions are very ripe” in the US for “that sort of low-level conflict” in many parts of the country.

“This is not just a Washington, DC thing — I really think we could see something a good deal worse, and part of that could also happen if a Trump or a savvier successor is reelected. And that misuse of the justice system could foment that even more,” he said.

The letter that former President Donald Trump received from special counsel Jack Smith informing him that he is a target of the federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election mentions three federal statutes related to the deprivation of rights, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and tampering with a witness.

Those three federal statutes were included in the letter Trump said he received on Sunday night, according to two attorneys with direct knowledge of the document. The context surrounding the statutes cited in the target letter is unclear, and their inclusion in the letter doesn't necessarily mean Trump will be charged with related counts or that an indictment would be limited to only those three statutes.

The details of the letter were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The Justice Department defines a "target" as “a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant.” The purpose of notifying a target of the status is "to afford him or her an opportunity to testify before the grand jury," according to the Justice Department.

Trump said he believes the letter means he will be indicted for a third time, alleging it’s part of an effort by President Joe Biden and his administration to target him because he is “Joe Biden’s NUMBER ONE POLITICAL OPPONENT, who is largely dominating him in the race for the Presidency.”

Multiple people familiar with the matter say Trump has no plans to travel to Washington this week to testify before the special counsel. William Russell, a former White House aide of Trump's who works for his 2024 presidential campaign, will testify to the grand jury investigating the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Russell has already appeared multiple times before the grand jury.

A federal grand jury deciding whether to indict former President Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election is meeting Thursday and hearing testimony from an aide who was with Trump for much of the day on Jan. 6, 2021.

William Russell, a former White House aide who now works for Trump's presidential campaign, was scheduled to testify before the grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith. Russell has previously testified before the grand jury, which is investigating the Jan. 6 riot and efforts to "interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election."

Woodward was late to an afternoon hearing for a Jan. 6 defendant he represents, former Trump appointee Federico Klein, prompting U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden to ask him to explain the delay. Woodward responded that he had to return to the grand jury room because, “I could not leave my client in the grand jury when he was being asked questions that specially involved executive privilege.”

McFadden said the government had not acted as he required and summoned prosecutors from the grand jury to his courtroom. Thomas Windom, a prosecutor from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office, and three colleagues arrived shortly thereafter. McFadden, Windom and Woodward spoke at the bench for roughly five minutes. Their conversation could not be overheard and Windom and his colleagues left the courtroom after.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was contacted by special counsel Jack Smith's office as it investigates efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results, a spokesperson for the governor confirmed on Friday.

"I can confirm our office has been contacted by Jack Smith’s office," Andrew Isenhour said in a statement, declining to provide further comment.

The Washington Post first reported on the Republican governor's contact with Smith's office, which has been examining false electors from battleground states who in most cases signed certification documents purporting that Trump had won in their states even though he had lost.

A spokesperson for the special counsel's office declined to comment.

Kemp's contact with the special counsel is not the first time he has been sought out for information about Trump and his allies' efforts in Georgia.

In November, the governor testified before a special grand jury investigating whether Trump and his allies engaged in election interference in Georgia. That probe, which launched in 2021, is being overseen by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has indicated that any indictments would likely be handed down in August.

The lawyer who represents former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik has turned over thousands of pages of documents to special counsel Jack Smith's office as part of the federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The attorney, Tim Parlatore, said Monday that he submitted the records to Smith's office on Sunday.

"I have shared all of these documents, approximately 600MB, mostly pdfs, with the Special Counsel and look forward to sitting down with them in about 2 weeks to discuss," Parlatore said in a statement to CNN that he later confirmed to NBC News.

The Daily Beast first reported that Kerik had handed over the documents, following a privilege review by former President Donald Trump's campaign.

Kerik, who had worked with former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in an effort to uncover voter fraud following President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, tweeted Monday night he was subpoenaed “several months ago” and that his lawyer had recently obtained the appropriate waivers from Trump to allow the documents to be handed over to the special counsel's office.

“No one has flipped, no one is selling out Trump or Giuliani,” Kerik wrote. “This is about giving the Special Counsel the evidence that the legal team collected under the supervision of @RudyGiuliani, and was reviewing in the aftermath of the 2020 election relating to voter/election fraud, and improprieties in that election.”

NBC News previously reported that Kerik is expected to meet with the special counsel's office in mid-August on a voluntary basis to answer questions about efforts to reverse the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riot.

Kerik was appointed as New York City police commissioner by Giuliani. He served in that role from August 2000 through December 2001 while Giuliani was mayor. Kerik rose to national fame following the 9/11 terrorist attacks but was later sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to felony charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials.

The special counsel’s office has inquired about a White House briefing on Feb. 14, 2020, at which federal officials assured then-President Donald Trump of the security and integrity of the U.S. election system, according to people familiar with the matter.

Two people who have been interviewed since May by the special counsel’s office, which is investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election, spoke with NBC News on condition that they not be named.

In the briefing, officials from multiple agencies — including the FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — laid out why it’s extraordinarily difficult for hacking or fraud to change the results of a U.S. election.

Trump was receptive to the message and spoke about holding a news conference on the topic, though he never did, two people familiar with it said.

As director of CISA, Chris Krebs focused on U.S. election infrastructure nationwide and efforts to stop any foreign government interference or hacking of the voting system. While he was in charge, the agency released a “rumor control” website that debunked some of the false election conspiracy theories that Trump spread after losing the 2020 election.

Krebs was interviewed by the special counsel’s office, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Krebs was notably at odds with Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election because Krebs insisted that the voting systems were protected. On Nov. 12, 2020, CISA issued a joint statement with other election security groups calling the election “the most secure in American history.”

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” the statement said.

Trump fired Krebs by tweet five days later.