US Attorney General Merrick Garland to Appoint an Independent Prosecutor to Investigate Donald Trump

The attorney general of USAMerrick Garland, announced this Friday the appointment of a special prosecutor who will investigate the former president donald trump for his possible involvement in the assault on the Capitol and for the classified documents found at his residence in Mar-a-Lago (Florida).

Garland did not expressly cite Trump, but he did make it clear that the investigation will refer to the possible implications of those who instigated the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as well as the documents found during an FBI search of the former president’s mansion. in Mar-a-Lago.

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The Secretary of the Department of Justice stressed that he has decided to open this special investigation after learning of the intentions of Trump and the country’s president, Joe Biden, to run in the 2024 presidential elections.

“I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special prosecutor,” he added.

The investigations into the assault on the Capitol will focus, according to Garland, on finding out if there were one or more people who “interfered in the transfer of power” and in the process of ratifying Biden as president on January 6, 2021 in Congress, after winning the 2020 elections against Trump.

Regarding Mar-a-Lago, Garland pointed out that it is necessary to investigate the handling of the classified documents that were found there by the FBI and find out if there was obstruction of Justice during that investigation.

Garland explained that the investigation led by the designated special prosecutor, Jack Smith, will be independent of those already open in both Florida and the District of Columbia, and that it will not delay the rest.

In a statement on the same Friday, Smith promised that he would carry out his inquiry and “any prosecution that may come from them independently.”

In addition to an extensive career as a prosecutor, the now special investigator for the Department of Justice also worked at the International Criminal Court, between 2008 and 2010, where he investigated, among other cases, war crimes committed in the Kosovo war.

Before being named special prosecutor on Friday, Smith went through the office of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, handling cases of corruption, crime and gang violence, according to his biography on the Justice Department website.

It is the second time that Trump has been subjected to such an investigation, since in 2017, former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

At the end of the investigation, Mueller filed charges against 34 people, several of them from Trump’s inner circle, including his personal lawyer Michael Flynn, his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his adviser Roger Stone. EFE

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Source: Elcomercio

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I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.