january 6th. this does not include prosecutions that are currently pending in the district of columbia or future investigations or prosecutions of individuals for offenses committed while they were physically present on the capital grounds on january 6th. those investigations and prosecutions will remain under the authority of the u.s. attorney for the district of columbia. the special counsel will also conduct the investigation involving classified documents and other presidential records as well as the possible obstruction of that investigation. today i signed an order appointing jack smith to serve as special counsel. the order authorizes him to continue the ongoing investigation into both of the matters that i have just described and to prosecute any federal crimes that may arise from those investigations. mr. smith is a veteran career prosecutor. he began his career in 1994 as
to hold a joint session of congress, that would come up with the january 6th investigation but very interesting that what the attorney general said was this will be done quickly. now, our definition of quickly and what the rest of the world thinks of as quickly when it comes to these kinds of investigations may be very different. but he noted a lot of work has been done. jack smith will pick up where that has been and add to it. continue the investigation from there, but he noted we were in such a unique situation. not only do you have the former president announcing his candidacy, that pushed this, and the current president intends to be a candidate too, he felt in his judgment a special counsel. sandra: great to get your immediate reaction, and jonathan turley and gerry baker. smith is a solid appointment, i don t think you will find many critics. a great deal of experience across the board from public integrity to international
are going to have an investigation of joe biden, we are going to have an investigation of the origins of covid, afghanistan, a number of other things as well. democrats are going to be, i m sure, hammering on the special counsel investigation every opportunity they can to try to cast dispersions on president trump and republicans will do investigations not reflect favorably i m sure on the democrats. we have a recipe here for a lot of political heat in washington, d.c., at least in the next year, i would think. yeah, if you like c-span and hearings, and you are going to have a ton of them you ll be able to watch on both sides of the aisle, probably. republicans in the house have said they can walk and chew gum at the same time. pressure on them like don t do crazy investigations, be about passing bills that help americans. they are going to say only so much we can do on that front, can t get things through the senate too much and the president talks about his veto pen so they are g
of power is quite broad and again, i did hear the attorney general say they want to do this qui quickly but a lot of people involved, a lot of events, meetings, documents related to that that i think yeah, and also politically very, very significant. i mean, the interesting question here, the president, jonathan turley says everybody will approve of jack smith s appointment, well the former president certainly will and how he chooses to use this to his own political opportunity will be an issue in the next few weeks. sandra: reading from the letter from the justice department detailing the background of special counsel jack smith, last line of it, his work as special counsel begins immediately. john: and shannon, i want to drill down in this idea of merrick garland saying he wants this to happen quickly. i don t remember a special counsel investigation that happened on schedule that even resembled the word quickly. i think they are aware of the
finite amount of evidence, and finite number of witnesses. it should not take an exhaustive type of investigation. there are real risks here for the former president. statements made to the fbi about the presence of classified evidence at mar-a-lago. this was a self-inflicted wound and it could be potentially charged and so i think that s where most of us will be looking in terms of the special counsel but garland may give us a better idea of the scope of this investigation. john: so as always, any time something like this happens we rush to the white house for a response, jonathan. according to a white house official, the doj makes decisions about criminal investigations independently, we are not involved. i would refer you to doj for any questions on this. that coming from rich edson.