Featured

Trump: Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader, but I said no thanks

Trump’s “Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader” joke at an NRCC fundraiser uses a real, deadly leadership crisis in Iran to normalize assassination-as-policy and blur what’s confirmed about the war and succession.

Mar 26, 2026

Featured

‘Men need to be perp-walked’ after Epstein files release, Massie tells BBC

A GOP lawmaker says the Epstein document releases are still falling short—because redactions and withheld material may be blocking accountability and survivor-centered justice.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

The Trump gold coin is not normal : Consider This from NPR

A federal design panel OK’d a Trump portrait for a commemorative gold coin, but the key question is whether Treasury can legally bypass long-standing limits meant to keep living politicians off U.S. money.

Mar 23, 2026

Featured

White House Confronted Over Huge Bets Made Minutes Before Trump’s Big War Move

A $580 million burst of oil-futures selling minutes before Trump’s Iran “talks” post raises a basic public-interest question: did anyone trade on advance knowledge of a market-moving national security decision?

Mar 24, 2026

Norms Impact

Jack Smith, Who Led Prosecutions of Trump, Resigns (Published 2025)

A federal special counsel exited in silence as policy and court orders left two historic prosecutions unresolved, normalizing a democracy where power can outlast accountability.

Judiciary

Jan 11, 2025

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/us/politics/jack-smith-special-counsel-resigns.html

Summary

Special counsel Jack Smith resigned from the Justice Department on Jan. 10, 2025, after submitting his final confidential report on Jan. 7. His exit closed a special-counsel effort whose prosecutions were halted under the department policy barring cases against a sitting president, after Donald J. Trump won the November election and was set to take office Jan. 20. The result is that two federal cases—one over classified documents in Florida and one over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Washington—ended without adjudication, with Smith’s final report temporarily blocked from public release.

Reality Check

When prosecutions touching a president’s conduct can be nullified by election timing and then sealed from public view, our rights are weakened by design: accountability becomes contingent on political success, not legal proof. Nothing described here is likely criminal by Smith—resigning after submitting a report and complying with a court’s temporary nondisclosure order is ordinary—and the governing constraint is an internal Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president, not a statute. The democratic danger is institutional: unresolved allegations involving classified records and election subversion can be left without adjudication, while a judge can delay disclosure of the government’s findings, depriving the public of the factual record needed for oversight.

Detail

Jack Smith, appointed special counsel, separated from the Justice Department on Jan. 10, 2025, after completing his work and submitting a final confidential report on Jan. 7, 2025. His resignation was disclosed in a footnote in a court filing submitted Saturday to U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon in the Florida classified-documents case.

Smith had brought two federal prosecutions against President-elect Donald J. Trump in 2023: one in Florida alleging mishandling classified documents and one in Washington alleging a plot to overturn the 2020 election. After Trump’s November electoral victory, Smith’s prosecutions were rendered moot under a Justice Department policy prohibiting prosecution of a sitting president, requiring him to drop both cases.

In his final week, Judge Cannon temporarily blocked public release of Smith’s final report until at least Monday. Smith made no formal public announcement, and his spokesman declined comment.