The News
The office of special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing two criminal investigations into former President Donald Trump, spent over $5.4 million in the first five months after he was appointed, newly released figures show.
From mid-November until the end of March, Smith spent most of those funds on employee compensation and benefits, followed by contractual services.
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Smith is probing Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House. The documents investigation led to a historic 37-count criminal indictment against Trump last month to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Meanwhile, the office of Special Counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed in January to look into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, spent about $615,000 through the end of March, according to the Department of Justice.
The DOJ also released additional spending data for John Durham, who was appointed as a special counsel in 2020 to review the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Durham, who released a final report for his probe in May, spent a total of $7.6 million as of March.
For comparison, the nearly two-year Mueller probe into Russian election interference cost a total of nearly $32 million. That investigation also brought in over $40 million for the DOJ in asset forfeiture and revealing defendants had evaded paying taxes.
