【中美创新时报2025 年 1 月 11 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）杰克·史密斯（Jack Smith）是司法部长梅里克·B·加兰任命的特别顾问，他曾表示将在唐纳德·J·特朗普就职典礼前辞职。《纽约时报》记者Glenn Thrush 和 Alan Feuer对此作了下述报道。
根据法庭文件中的脚注，对当选总统唐纳德·J·特朗普提起两次联邦起诉但均以失败告终的特别顾问杰克·史密斯本周辞职——这是对这场重塑美国法律和政治格局的斗争的一个非常低调的结局。
据一位高级执法官员称，史密斯先生曾是一名战争罪检察官，他与特朗普的法律团队在两条战线上进行了一场激烈而旷日持久的斗争，但在地方法院和由特朗普先生塑造的最高法院都失败了。史密斯先生于周五离开了他在华盛顿的办公室。
他的离职是意料之中的。在特朗普先生于 1 月 20 日上任之前，史密斯先生就已表示他打算离职，特朗普先生曾威胁要解雇和惩罚他。
最后，史密斯先生没有正式宣布这一决定。他的发言人没有发表评论。
这位特别检察官在法庭上的努力因特朗普先生 11 月的政治胜利而基本失去意义后离开了。根据司法部禁止对现任总统提起诉讼的政策，史密斯先生被迫撤销了他在 2023 年对特朗普先生提起的两起案件——一起在佛罗里达州，指控他不当处理大量机密文件，另一起在华盛顿，指控他密谋推翻 2020 年大选。
在史密斯任期的最后一周，他又遭遇了一次法律挫折，这位法官是特朗普任命的审理佛罗里达州文件案的法官：她暂时阻止公开发布史密斯的最终报告，至少要到周一。
这场旷日持久的法律纠纷让特朗普心怀怨恨，也让他下定决心重返权力舞台。周六，在发送给坎农法官的一份简报的最后一页底部，史密斯只写了一行字：“特别检察官完成了工作，并于 2025 年 1 月 7 日提交了最后一份机密报告，并于 1 月 10 日离开该部门。”
史密斯的辞职让他在调查特朗普并最终对其提出指控的两年多历程中的最后一步尚未完成：发布一份两卷报告，详细说明他在两起刑事案件中的决策。
过去一周，特朗普的律师和文件案中他的两名同案被告的律师一直在激烈地争取阻止这两卷文件的发布。在法庭文件中，他们抨击这份报告是对当选总统的“片面”和“非法”的政治攻击，并抱怨它不公平地牵连了一些未具名的“预期”新政府成员。
这份报告相当于史密斯先生对他在 2022 年 11 月首次被任命时开始的工作的告别词，当时特朗普先生宣布再次竞选总统后不久。它包含了他对为何在这两起案件中提出指控的解释，以及他不提出其他指控的法律理由。
每个案件都以不同的方式失败。
7 月，法官坎农在一项裁决中直接驳回了机密文件案，该裁决裁定——与数十年的先例相反——史密斯先生被非法任命为特别顾问。虽然史密斯的副手对该裁决提出上诉，但他们在特朗普连任后放弃了针对他的挑战，但并没有针对他的两名同案被告。
大约在同一时间，最高法院在一项具有里程碑意义的裁决中阻碍了选举干预案的审理，该裁决赋予特朗普在担任总统期间采取的官方行为广泛的豁免权。这项裁决不仅质疑了史密斯起诉书中的许多指控，而且更重要的是，使得在选举前对这些指控进行审判成为不可能。
本周早些时候，司法部表示，由于对特朗普的前同案被告沃尔特·诺塔和卡洛斯·德奥利维拉的起诉仍在继续，因此不打算立即公布史密斯关于机密文件案的报告。该部门表示，计划私下向国会议员展示该部分报告，并在对这两名男子的所有诉讼程序完成后才公开。
然而，司法部确实计划尽快公布有关选举干预案的卷宗。但瑙塔先生和德奥利维拉先生的律师已要求坎农法官延长阻止该报告的命令。
对特朗普先生的两项调查最初是由普通联邦检察官进行的。在特朗普先生宣布竞选总统的计划后，司法部长梅里克·B·加兰先生任命史密斯先生负责这些案件，以便在调查与司法部之间保持一定距离。
加兰先生在宣布任命这位纽约州北部人时表示，史密斯先生是“以公平和紧急的方式完成这些事务的正确选择”，他曾担任海牙调查科索沃战争罪行的最高检察官。
55 岁的史密斯先生是一个难以捉摸的人。他不接受采访，保持低调——只在记者面前短暂露面，宣读简短声明，确认他打算公平、迅速地调查特朗普先生。
“遵守法治是司法部的一项基本原则，”史密斯先生在 2023 年 8 月宣布佛罗里达州的起诉书时说。“我们国家对法治的承诺为世界树立了榜样。我们国家只有一套法律，它们适用于所有人。”
现在，史密斯先生和负责特朗普案件的资深检察官小团队可能会成为共和党人的攻击目标。他反对的特朗普团队的三名律师已被特朗普先生任命为司法部和白宫的高级职位，特朗普先生曾多次暗示那些把他送上刑事法庭的人应该承担后果。
“我打败了精神错乱的杰克·史密斯，他是个精神错乱的人，”特朗普先生本周在佛罗里达州告诉记者。“我们没有做错什么。我们在任何事情上都没有做错。”
一些民主党人，包括众议院监督委员会资深民主党人、弗吉尼亚州众议员杰拉尔德·康诺利 (Gerald E. Connolly)，呼吁拜登总统对史密斯及其团队进行先发制人的赦免。
题图：特别顾问杰克·史密斯，2023 年 8 月。图片来源：Kevin Wurm/路透社
附原英文报道：
Jack Smith, Who Led Prosecutions of Trump, Resigns
Mr. Smith, a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, had signaled that he would step down before Donald J. Trump’s inauguration.
Jack Smith, the special counsel, in August 2023.Credit…Kevin Wurm/Reuters
By Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer
Jan. 11, 2025
Updated 6:15 p.m. ET
Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two failed federal prosecutions against President-elect Donald J. Trump, resigned this week, according to a footnote buried in court papers — a remarkably muted conclusion to a fight that reshaped the nation’s legal and political landscape.
Mr. Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor who fought a bitter and protracted battle on two fronts with the Trump legal team but lost in both a district court and in the Supreme Court shaped by Mr. Trump, left his offices in Washington on Friday, according to a senior law enforcement official.
His departure was expected. Mr. Smith had signaled his intention to leave before Mr. Trump, who had threatened to fire and punish him, took office on Jan. 20.
In the end, Mr. Smith made no formal announcement. His spokesman had no comment.
The special counsel departed after his efforts in the courtroom were essentially rendered moot by Mr. Trump’s political victory in November. Under a Justice Department policy prohibiting the pursuit of prosecutions against a sitting president, Mr. Smith was compelled to drop both of the cases he had filed against Mr. Trump in 2023 — one in Florida, accusing him of mishandling a trove of classified documents, and the other in Washington, on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Smith’s final week was marked by one more legal setback at the hands of Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed jurist presiding over the Florida documents case: She temporarily blocked public release of his final report until at least Monday.
The monumental legal saga, which embittered Mr. Trump and steeled him for his remarkable return to power, ended with a single line at the bottom of the last page of a brief sent to Judge Cannon on Saturday: “The special counsel completed his work and submitted his final confidential report on Jan. 7, 2025, and separated from the department on Jan. 10.”
Mr. Smith’s resignation left unfinished one last step in the more than two-year odyssey he undertook by investigating and ultimately bringing charges against Mr. Trump: the release of a two-volume report detailing his decision-making in both criminal cases.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers and lawyers for his two co-defendants in the documents case have been fighting fiercely for the past week to stop the release of both volumes. In court papers, they have assailed the report as a “one-sided” and “unlawful” political attack against the president-elect and complained it unfairly implicates some unnamed “anticipated” members of his incoming administration.
The report amounts to Mr. Smith’s valedictory word on the work he started when he was first appointed in November 2022, shortly after Mr. Trump announced he was running again for president. It contains his explanations of why he brought the charges he did in the two cases as well as his legal reasoning for not bringing other charges.
Each of the cases died in different ways.
The classified documents case was dismissed outright by Judge Cannon in a July ruling that found — against decades of precedent — that Mr. Smith had been unlawfully appointed to his job as special counsel. While Mr. Smith’s deputies appealed that ruling, they dropped the challenge where Mr. Trump was concerned after he was re-elected, but not against his two co-defendants.
Around the same time, the Supreme Court hobbled the election interference case in a landmark ruling that granted Mr. Trump a broad form of immunity for official acts he took as president. The ruling not only called into question many of the allegations in Mr. Smith’s indictment, but more important, made it impossible to hold a trial on the charges before the election.
Earlier this week, the Justice Department said it did not intend to immediately release the volume of Mr. Smith’s report concerning the classified documents case because the prosecution of Mr. Trump’s former co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, continued. The department said it planned to show that part of the report in private to members of Congress and make it public only once all of the proceedings against the two men had been completed.
The Justice Department does, however, plan to release the volume concerning the election interference case as soon as possible. But lawyers for Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira have asked Judge Cannon to extend her order blocking the report.
The two investigations of Mr. Trump were initially conducted by regular federal prosecutors. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland placed Mr. Smith in charge of the cases after Mr. Trump announced his plans to run for president in order to put some distance between the inquiries and the Justice Department.
Mr. Smith was “the right choice to complete these matters in an evenhanded and urgent manner,” Mr. Garland said in announcing the appointment of the upstate New York native, who had been serving as the top prosecutor at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo.
Mr. Smith, 55, cut an elusive figure. He granted no interviews and kept a low profile — appearing before reporters only briefly to read short statements affirming his intention to investigate Mr. Trump fairly and quickly.
“Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice,” said Mr. Smith, in announcing the Florida indictments in August 2023. “And our nation’s commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”
Now, Mr. Smith and the small team of veteran prosecutors who worked on the Trump cases may end up in the cross hairs of Republicans. Three of the Trump team lawyers he opposed have been given top positions in the Justice Department and the White House by Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly suggested that those who put him in the criminal dock should face consequences.
“I defeated deranged Jack Smith, he’s a deranged individual,” Mr. Trump told reporters in Florida this week. “We did nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong on anything.”
Some Democrats, including Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, have called on President Biden to issue a pre-emptive pardon of Mr. Smith and his team.
