Jack Smith Gets Good News From Mike Johnson

quote:

---

Speaker Mike Johnson rejected calls from Republican hard-liners to defund special counsel Jack Smith during an interview with Politico which was broadcast on Thursday.

House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, a committed Donald Trump supporter, has made a number of bids to end funding to Smith, a special counsel for the Department of Justice, over the past year. However in the interview, Johnson claimed you can't "wave a wand and just eliminate the special counsel."

---

quote:

---

Referring to calls for Smith to lose federal funding, in a bid to frustrate his legal actions against Trump, Johnson said: "That's not something you wave a wand and just eliminate the special counsel as a provision."

He went on to defend the function of special prosecutors, who are appointed to investigate suspected wrongdoing in a specific case. Johnson commented: "There is a necessity for a function like that because sometimes the Department of Justice, which is an executive branch agency, can't necessarily, without a conflict of interest investigate or prosecute the president who's their boss, or the president's family."

---

quote:

---

Asked whether he would try to amend appropriations bills to remove special counsel Smith's position, Johnson replied: "No." Any such move would be extremely unlikely to be passed into law as it could be blocked by the Democratic controlled Senate or President Biden.

---