Emergency Edition: Another Special Counsel Investigation of Donald Trump
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2022
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Earlier today, in a surprise announcement, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to lead two ongoing federal investigations of former president and now official 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump. The special counsel, Jack Smith, is a longtime DOJ prosecutor and currently the chief Kosovo war crimes prosecutor in The Hague. He will take over the investigation into the retention of classified and government documents at Mar-a-lago, as well as the investigation into attempts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power after the 2020 election.
To make sense of the special counsel appointment and what it means for the federal investigations into Donald Trump, Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Lawfare editor-in-chief Ben Wittes, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic, and former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into foreign election interference in the 2016 election.
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| 1:09.0 | And so whether Garland's judgement is that there is no conflict of interest, |
| 1:13.0 | but there's an extraordinary circumstance, or whether it's that he doesn't reach the question of whether it is a conflict of interest, |
| 1:20.0 | because there's an extraordinary circumstance. |
| 1:23.0 | It leads you to the same place anyway, which is that the regs, at least if you're going to be honest about it, |
| 1:31.0 | require the appointment of a special counsel. |
| 1:35.0 | So I think it's correct. I think it's the correct decision. |
| 1:38.0 | And I'm not sure it wasn't required before, although I think the line that they've drawn is probably a defensible one. |
| 1:48.0 | But I just don't see the argument for not doing it after Tuesday. |
| 1:53.0 | I'm Alan Rosenstein, and this is a special edition of the Law Fair Podcast, November 18, 2022. |
| 2:00.0 | Earlier today in a surprise announcement, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel |
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