By Tom Ozimek
Jack Smith, the special counsel leading two investigations—alleged election interference and classified document mishandling—into former President Donald Trump, has spent $9.3 million more than the special counsel investigating President Joe Biden’s alleged document mishandling probe.
The sharp difference in spending was disclosed in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Special Counsel’s Office (SCO) expense reports—including Mr. Smith’s latest statement of expenditures and special counsel Robert Hur’s latest statement of expenditures—both of which cover the six month period between April 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2023.
Earlier expense reports for the two special counsels—Nov. 18, 2022, through March 31, 2023, for Mr. Smith and Jan. 12, 2023, through March 31, 2023, for Mr. Hur—round out the picture.
The reports show that Mr. Smith spent $7.3 million in the six months ending Sept. 30, 2023, on his two investigations into President Trump, raising his total expenses to nearly $12.7 million.
By comparison, Mr. Hur’s investigation into President Biden’s classified document case cost $2.8 million between April and September of last year. In the previous period between Jan. 12, 2023 (the day of Mr. Hur’s appointment) and March 31, 2023, his office spent around $616,000, bringing the total to roughly $3.4 million.
That means Mr. Smith has, to date, outspent Mr. Hur by over $9 million, with the disclosures coming a day after President Trump’s attorneys complained that Mr. Smith had spent many millions prosecuting the former president.
President Trump is currently contending with four criminal indictments at state and federal levels, including two brought by Mr. Smith and his team.
The former president has pleaded not guilty and claims the cases against him are politically motivated efforts to hamstring his 2024 comeback bid for the White House.
He’s the frontrunner by far for the Republican nomination, with the latest polling average showing he’s 51.7 points ahead of his closest rivals, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
President Trump has accused the Biden administration of having “weaponized” the Justice Department against him and has suggested he may turn the tables if elected in 2024.
‘Could Certainly Happen in Reverse’
In October, President Trump said that the various indictments he’s been hit with—totaling 91 criminal charges—have released the retaliation “genie out of the box.”
In an interview on Univision, a reporter asked: “You say they’ve weaponized the Justice Department, they weaponized the FBI. Would you do the same if you’re reelected?”
President Trump replied, “Well, he’s unleashed something that everybody, we’ve all known about this for a hundred years,” presumably referring to President Biden.
The former president then alleged that prosecutors have “done indictments in order to win an election,” accusing the Biden administration of breaking with the precedent of not targeting political rivals with investigations and indictments.
“We’ve watched other countries do it and, in some cases, effective and in other cases, the country’s overthrown or it’s been totally ineffective,” President Trump said.
“But we’ve watched this for a long time, and it’s not unique, but it’s unique for the United States. Yeah. If they do this, and they’ve already done it, but if they want to follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse,” he continued.
“It could certainly happen in reverse. What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box,” he added.
Later, in a post on social media, President Trump shared the poll results showing that voters believe “revenge” would be a top theme of a potential second Trump term in the White House.
By contrast, President Biden’s potential second term in office was most commonly characterized in the poll by the word “nothing.”
