AP
Trump-hunting special counsel Jack Smith looks to have his lavish spending curtailed if Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee have their way Thursday.
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) is pushing an amendment to the DOJ budget that would prohibit Smith “purloining” funding provided to other law enforcement agencies in his zealous investigations of Donald Trump.
Hagerty has discovered that Smith has been siphoning off more than $11 million a year which had been allocated to the FBI and US Marshals Service by the Appropriations Committee for “real law enforcement.”
“The abuse by Jack Smith and the DOJ of American taxpayer funds to pursue their political opponents in lieu of the criminals which the funds were appropriated to pursue has to stop,” says Hagerty, a Trump ally who wants the special counsel’s office to reimburse as much as $30 million which he says it has taken from the FBI and Marshals’ budgets since 2022.
Smith is “reappropriating funds we appropriated for prosecuting criminals in the midst of a crime wave … My demand is simple. I want the funds reimbursed and I want [the abuse] to stop.”
Hagerty’s move comes as Republicans search for ways to defund multiple politicized prosecutions against Trump, including by Smith, Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
While House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said he would not seek to eliminate Smith’s job, he told CNN last month: “We’ve got to bring accountability.”
The Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill released last month proposes funding cuts to the DOJ of nearly $1 billion, including blocking the construction of a new headquarters in Maryland.