Justice Department, special counsel have spent nearly $24 million on Trump-related cases

By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — The Justice Department has spent nearly $24 million investigating and prosecuting former President Donald Trump and his allies, according to expense reports.

In the most recent expense report released Friday, which covers April 2023 to September 2023, special counsel Jack Smith’s office reported spending $7.4 million on things such as salaries, supplies and transportation. Other DOJ entities spent an additional $7.3 million to support Smith during the same period, the report shows.

The report is the second released by the Justice Department since Smith was appointed special counsel. Last year, Smith and the Justice Department reported spending more than $9.2 million between November 2022 and March 2023.

Smith has brought two criminal cases against the former president: one related to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and one over his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.

Though Smith’s price tag tops those of special counsels Robert Hur and David Weiss and former special counsel John Durham, his spending is still less than the nearly $32 million that Robert Mueller spent during his yearslong probe into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump.

For his part, Hur has spent more than $3.4 million on his investigation into the handling of classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and former private office, and the department has spent about $3 million in support. CNN previously reported that Hur and his team are compiling a detailed report on their yearlong probe but are not expected to bring any charges.

Weiss, who has filed two criminal indictments against Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has spent $182,683 over less than two months through September 2023, according to his expense report, though his expenses do not include any investigative efforts taken before he was given special counsel status in August. Additional DOJ expenditures related to his investigation amount to $132,098.

And Durham, who concluded his investigation into potential misconduct in the Trump-Russia probe in May, spent $8.2 million from the time he started his investigation as a special counsel in 2020, while DOJ expenditures in the case totaled $1.7 million, according to Friday’s filing.

Durham released a 300-page report in May that strongly rebuked the FBI’s investigation into Trump and highlighted multiple errors in the origins of the bureau’s investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. His investigation resulted in one guilty plea of an FBI lawyer who admitted to doctoring an email regarding a surveillance warrant.

The two additional prosecutions brought by Durham’s team, against a campaign lawyer for Hillary Clinton and a source for the Trump-Russia dossier, both ended in acquittals.

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