WASHINGTON — 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.
Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed in January to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, spent nearly $616,000 through March, according to a separate expenditure statement released by the Justice Department. The largest amount spent was also on salaries and benefits for staff members.
Smith’s office presented evidence in the Trump classified documents case — one of its two investigations into the former president — to a federal grand jury, which indicted Trump last month on charges that he misled federal investigators in his attempt to hold on to a trove of sensitive material that he allegedly knew was still classified.
Trump faces 37 felony counts, including making false statements, conspiracy to obstruct justice and willful retention of national defense information, related to the more than 100 classified documents that were recovered from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last year, according to the indictment. He pleaded not guilty and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
Trump is set to face trial, tentatively scheduled for August, although prosecutors are asking it be pushed back until later this year.
Smith’s office, meanwhile, is still investigating Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. It’s unclear when that investigation will be completed or whether it will lead to another indictment of the former president.
Dareh Gregorian contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
