Jor­dan Demands DOJ Pro­vide Evi­dence Regard­ing Pos­si­ble Mis­con­duct By Jack Smith

Posted in Election 2024  •  Published by

On Wednes­day, Rep. Jim Jor­dan (R‑OH), the chair­man of the House Com­mit­tee on the Judi­cia­ry, fired off a let­ter to the Biden Depart­ment of Jus­tice demand­ing the Office of Pro­fes­sion­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty pro­vide crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the oper­a­tions of Spe­cial Coun­sel Jack Smith and his team’s efforts to pros­e­cute Don­ald Trump.

Smith had charged Trump with try­ing to sub­vert the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in one case and mis­han­dling clas­si­fied doc­u­ments in anoth­er.

“The infor­ma­tion that you have pro­vid­ed only rein­forces our con­cerns that OPR acts more to pro­tect Depart­ment pros­e­cu­tors than to root out pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct,” Jor­dan wrote to Jef­frey Rags­dale, the coun­sel for OPR. “While we appre­ci­ate you con­firm­ing an open inves­ti­ga­tion into Jack Smith’s pros­e­cu­tors, we are con­cerned that your refusal to take prompt inves­tiga­tive steps will allow these attor­neys to evade inter­nal account­abil­i­ty by leav­ing the Depart­ment.”

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Jor­dan referred to a let­ter the Com­mit­tee wrote in May in which they asked for “doc­u­ments relat­ed to OPR’s inves­ti­ga­tions into alle­ga­tions that Spe­cial Coun­sel Jack Smith and his team lied to a fed­er­al court, manip­u­lat­ed evi­dence seized by the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) dur­ing its raid of Mar-a-Lago, and improp­er­ly pres­sured a lawyer rep­re­sent­ing a defen­dant indict­ed by Smith.”

The Com­mit­tee fol­lowed up with anoth­er let­ter in August regard­ing pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct regard­ing anoth­er mem­ber of Smith’s team, J.P. Cooney. After receiv­ing no response, the Com­mit­tee asked Rags­dale to make him­self avail­able to the Com­mit­tee in Sep­tem­ber and fol­lowed up with anoth­er request in Octo­ber regard­ing all their requests.

On Novem­ber 19, Rags­dale told the Com­mit­tee that OPR had opened an inves­ti­ga­tion into Smith’s office in June 2023, but OPR did not con­duct an “inquiry” or “inves­ti­ga­tion” into the alle­ga­tions because it could “interfer[e] with” and “jeop­ar­dize” the pros­e­cu­tion, Jor­dan wrote.

“As you explained it, the Department’s pol­i­cy would keep bad-actor attor­neys in place to con­tin­ue pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct because of the admin­is­tra­tive dif­fi­cul­ty and resource con­straints involved in switch­ing attor­neys,” Jor­dan wrote. “This excuse not only defies com­mon sense, but it seems to vio­late the Department’s mis­sion to ensure that jus­tice is done in every case.”

After Trump was elect­ed, Smith revealed that his team was “mak­ing moves to wind down the two crim­i­nal cas­es.”

“Smith then gave your office per­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tions of attor­ney mis­con­duct by Smith’s office. You stat­ed that Smith only allowed the inves­ti­ga­tion to begin because it would now no longer ‘inter­fere with the Spe­cial Counsel’s inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion,’” Jor­dan not­ed.

“It is absurd that OPR – the Depart­ment enti­ty charged with uphold­ing eth­i­cal con­duct – would only exam­ine alle­ga­tions of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct after the sub­ject of the alle­ga­tions has approved the inquiry,” he declared.

“Your con­tin­ued fail­ure to coop­er­ate with our over­sight and appar­ent inten­tion to hide infor­ma­tion from the Com­mit­tee is more evi­dence that OPR oper­ates to pro­tect Depart­ment attor­neys from inde­pen­dent account­abil­i­ty,” Jor­dan assert­ed. “This let­ter serves as a for­mal request to pre­serve all exist­ing and future records and mate­ri­als relat­ed to OPR’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Spe­cial Coun­sel Smith and mem­bers of his pros­e­cu­tion team. Your office should con­strue this preser­va­tion notice as an instruc­tion to take all rea­son­able steps to pre­vent the destruc­tion or alter­ation, whether inten­tion­al­ly or neg­li­gent­ly, of all doc­u­ments, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and oth­er infor­ma­tion, includ­ing elec­tron­ic infor­ma­tion and meta­da­ta, that are or may be respon­sive to this con­gres­sion­al inquiry.”

In late Novem­ber, a judge reject­ed Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Paxton’s request that Smith pre­serve his records. In his request, Pax­ton wrote that he “fears that many releasable records … will nev­er see day­light. That is not because DOJ has any legal rea­son to with­hold them. Rather, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pax­ton has a well-found­ed belief as set forth here­in that Defen­dants will sim­ply destroy the records. That is how they and/or their pre­de­ces­sors have oper­at­ed in the recent past. And Jack Smith’s team has con­duct­ed itself in mul­ti­ple ways that sug­gest it can­not be blind­ly trust­ed to pre­serve, and even­tu­al­ly pro­duce, all of its records.”