Jack Smith plans to step down as special counsel before Trump takes office

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

45% : WASHINGTON -- Jack Smith, the special counsel who pursued two federal prosecutions of Donald Trump, plans to finish his work and resign along with other members of his team before Trump takes office in January, people familiar with his plans said.Smith's goal, they said, is to not leave any significant part of his work for others to complete and to get ahead of the president-elect's promise to fire him within "two seconds" of being sworn in.Smith, who since taking office two years ago has operated under the principle that not even a powerful ex-president is above the law, now finds himself on the defensive as he rushes to wind down a pair of complex investigations slowed by the courts and ultimately made moot by Trump's electoral victory.
42% : The prosecutor asked for and received a monthlong pause to the filing deadlines in his case in Washington charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
38% : Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor, is now a target of pro-Trump Republicans who portray him as the embodiment of a Democratic effort to use "lawfare," the so-called weaponization of the Justice Department, to destroy Trump.
38% : But like much of Smith's work involving Trump, this step is fraught with both technical and practical challenges that could make the report significantly different -- and shorter -- from the lengthy tomes produced by other recent special counsels.
36% : That same day, Smith's team filed a court document taking the first step to wind down his two-pronged prosecution of Trump.
32% : Smith said he needed until Dec. 2 to decide exactly how to wind down that case and his other Trump prosecution, in which Trump has been charged with mishandling classified national security documents after leaving office and obstructing efforts to retrieve them.
28% : The election's outcome spelled the end of the federal cases against Trump, since Justice Department policy has long held that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for crimes.
26% : Since he filed two separate and lengthy indictments last year against Trump, he has supplemented that record with scores of court filings elaborating on the allegations.

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