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2025-02-15 Government Corruption
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Special counsel Jack Smith discloses ‘gift' of $140,000 in free legal services
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[Politico via MSN, trying to retain some cred] Whoops
Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two criminal cases against President Donald Trump, received $140,000 in pro bono legal services from a prominent Washington law firm before he resigned last month.
Covington & Burling provided the legal representation, according to a disclosure POLITICO obtained that Smith submitted Jan. 10 in connection with his departure from the Justice Department.
A spokesperson for Covington declined comment. Two of the Covington lawyers representing Smith, Peter Koski and Lanny Breuer, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
It’s not clear precisely why Smith sought outside legal advice, but Trump repeatedly railed against Smith and his team, vowing to fire them and sometimes appearing to call for them to be criminally prosecuted.
“They ought to throw Deranged Jack Smith and his Thug Prosecutors in jail,” Trump wrote in a social media post in 2023, shortly after Smith filed a new indictment in the case charging Trump with illegally retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and conspiring to obstruct the investigation into their handling.
Earlier this month, in her first day on the job, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a directive decrying the “weaponization” of the Justice Department under the Biden administration and setting up a “working group” to investigate the phenomenon.
Although no criminal, civil or legal ethics probe of Smith’s actions has been announced by the department, she specifically instructed the working group to examine “Weaponization by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff who spent more than $50 million targeting President Trump, and the prosecutors and law enforcement personnel who participated in the unprecedented raid on President Trump's home.”
Covington’s representation of Smith was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
In President Joe Biden’s final days in office, there was widespread speculation about whether Biden might pardon Smith and his team. Biden eventually issued preemptive pardons for members of the House Jan. 6 Committee, former National Institutes of Health Director Anthony Fauci and former Joint Chiefs Chair Mark Milley.
However, no pardon for DOJ prosecutors was ever issued.
Smith has ties to several prominent lawyers at Covington, the law firm with the largest presence in D.C.
Breuer, Covington’s vice chair, served as head of the Justice Department’s criminal division from 2009 to 2013 and recruited Smith to take the pivotal post of chief of the department’s Public Integrity Section back in 2010.
Breuer has repeatedly defended Smith in interviews in recent years. “Jack is not political at all,” Breuer told the New York Times shortly after Smith was named special counsel in 2022. “He is straight down the middle.”
Covington is also home to a number of other prominent Justice Department officials, including President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder. Another Covington partner, Alan Vinegrad, was the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York during part of Smith’s tenure there and assigned him to prosecute a prominent police abuse case.
The Justice Department appears to have approved Smith’s request under an Office of Government Ethics regulation issued in 2023 that allows government employees to set up legal defense funds or take such services for free if the work is related to “the employee's past or current official position” or to a position on a presidential campaign or transition team. The rule says such arrangements must be cleared by an agency ethics official and reported on an employee’s financial disclosure.
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Posted by Frank G 2025-02-15 00:00||
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File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
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Posted by NN2N1 2025-02-15 05:31||
2025-02-15 05:31||
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Posted by Glusomp Spealet4328 2025-02-15 05:39||
2025-02-15 05:39||
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2025-02-15 10:20||
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Posted by 49 Pan 2025-02-15 11:52||
2025-02-15 11:52||
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Posted by Super Hose 2025-02-15 13:29||
2025-02-15 13:29||
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