The Department of Justice’s internal investigation into misconduct allegations against special counsel Jack Smith’s office will not conclude until next year, likely after Smith’s office has already disbanded, the department said Wednesday.
The DOJ revealed the rough time frame in a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and gave other details from a closed-door briefing that DOJ official Jeffrey Ragsdale gave to the committee last month.
“While [Ragsdale] cannot guarantee a specific time frame to complete a thorough investigation of the matter, his office is moving expeditiously, and he expects that the review will conclude in 2025,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote to Jordan.
The time frame comes after multiple reports revealed that Smith and his team plan to resign before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, meaning the special counsel team will likely not be around to see internal repercussions if they are found to have violated DOJ policies.
Ragsdale also conveyed to lawmakers “that he would expect that the Department would likely be willing to provide the final report [on the misconduct investigation] to Congress” once it is completed, according to Uriarte.
Ragsdale, who leads DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, confirmed to the committee that he had opened the misconduct investigation into Smith’s office in June 2023 but that he paused it indefinitely so as not to interfere with Smith’s prosecutions of Trump.
Ragsdale declined to give specifics about the nature of the misconduct allegations but told the committee he opened it after someone from Smith’s office self-reported to Ragsdale.
Uriarte shed more light on this, saying it was not only “routine” but also required when defense lawyers — in this case, lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants in the classified documents case in Florida — have made an allegation about a DOJ employee in court.
Uriarte’s comment that the self-reporting came after a complaint was made in court suggests the misconduct investigation related to an incident involving Smith prosecutor Jay Bratt, which first appeared in a sealed court filing in June 2023, the same month Ragsdale opened his inquiry.
The allegation against Bratt was made by Stanley Woodward, an attorney representing one of the co-defendants in the classified documents case against Trump. Woodward said that during a private meeting, Bratt inappropriately brought up Woodward’s application to become a judge while Bratt was trying to goad Woodward into complying with him in the Trump case. Smith’s team has disputed the accusation.
Uriarte’s letter also confirmed that Ragsdale was investigating various other allegations Congress has made about Smith’s office. While Uriarte did not provide specifics, Jordan has raised concerns with Ragsdale about another one of Smith’s prosecutors named J.P. Cooney, about whether Smith’s team mishandled classified documents evidence, and about whether Smith lied in court.
In addition to summarizing the briefing the DOJ gave Congress, Uriarte also said he was “troubled” that Jordan had spread “inaccuracies and misunderstandings” about it.
The letter had come in response to Jordan recently writing to Ragsdale and expressing his dissatisfaction with the briefing, specifically Ragsdale’s refusal to provide a specific time frame for completing the DOJ’s internal investigation into Smith’s office and the protracted nature of it.
Jordan had taken issue with the fact that DOJ halted its misconduct inquiry for more than a year, which meant that the DOJ would potentially “keep bad-actor attorneys in place to continue prosecutorial misconduct” rather than investigate matters right away, Jordan wrote.
Uriarte said that because the accusation against Smith’s office was first made to a court, it was “longstanding policy” to defer to the court and litigate the matter there, rather than internally.
Uriarte also argued that Ragsdale did provide a complete date estimate of 2025 and that it was not feasible to provide a more specific date.
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In addition to Ragsdale’s inquiries, Smith is expected to be hit with a barrage of investigative inquiries next year when he steps down from his post. Trump and his allies have vowed to dissect Smith’s two prosecutions of Trump and seek revenge for what they say were politically driven pursuits.
The prosecutions were unsuccessful for Smith, as he was forced to terminate the proceedings when Trump won the election because of the DOJ’s policy that it does not prosecute sitting presidents.
