Mr. Trump has declared on Truth Social that Mr. Smith “should be prosecuted for election interference & prosecutorial misconduct.” The president has also called him a “career criminal.” He also reposted the radio host Mark Levin’s view that “Jack Smith must go to prison.”

None of them had said publicly that they wanted a pardon, and it’s not clear any of them would have accepted one. But some top Democrats, like Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, had endorsed the notion of preemptively pardoning prosecutors, particularly Smith.

The acting attorney general said these officials could not be trusted to "faithfully implement the president's agenda."

While President Joe Biden issued many pardons before leaving office, he did not pardon various individuals Trump has blasted who were connected to cases against the Republican figure.

Radio host Charlamagne Tha God criticized President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) for publishing former special counsel Jack Smith’s report detailing the 2020 election prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump after his November election victory.

The report calls Trump's claims that the special counsel was influenced by Biden for political reasons "laughable."

Smith’s letter cited John Adams for the “fundamental value of our democracy that we exist as ‘a government of laws, and not of men.’” But our prized “rule of law” must inevitably be administered by men and women who are subject to being undermined by political attack.

The Supreme Court’s decision scrambled efforts from special counsel Jack Smith to prosecute the case against the former president, whose appeals on his “immunity” defense triggered a series of delays that ensured he would evade a trial before November’s election.

President Biden issued pre-emptive pardons for Dr. Anthony Fauci and others who may have faced scrutiny under the incoming Donald Trump administration.

The termination of more than a dozen lawyers who worked with the special counsel, Jack Smith, came hours after the department’s most senior career official was reassigned.

With actions big and small, Trump has spent his first days in office pushing the levers of government – and his unique powers as commander in chief – to target his perceived political enemies both inside and outside the government.

Three federal judges on Wednesday strongly condemned President Donald Trump's sweeping pardons of supporters who stormed the US Capitol four years ago in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.