Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz is demanding information from Attorney General Merrick Garland after he learned that one of the prosecutors working with special counsel Jack Smith faced misconduct allegations in 2009 and donated to Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign, Fox News reported.
In a letter to Attorney General Garland, Gaetz requested that the names of those working for the special counsel be made public.
Citing Jack Smith’s previous work, which he described as “highly irregular,” Gaetz argued that the structure of the special counsel’s office is “of extraordinary public concern.” He requested that Garland turn over “staff rosters,” as well as “phone lists” and “similar records” by July 7, including all of the employees that were either hired by or working in Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.
The Florida Republican argued that this information should be made available to the public and maintained that it was “beyond debate” that a list of staff “cannot be withheld from Congress” based on “entirely fantastic privacy concerns.”
In his letter, Gaetz notes that one prosecutor in the special counsel’s office, Karen Gilbert, previously resigned from her position in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida in 2009 after she faced misconduct allegations.
Additionally, Gilbert donated more than $2,000 to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Gaetz told Attorney General Garland that the reason he was seeking the information is that it is clear to him that no vetting of personnel was done by the special counsel’s office. He even suggested that the special counsel may have sought to staff his office with “sanctioned lawyers and partisan hatchet-men.”
He closed his letter by reminding Garland that Congress has the authority to defund the special counsel’s office if it believes that the special counsel is “not operating in the public interest.”
