Now that Jack Smith has left the building — meaning, “separated” from the Justice Department — the question that begs for an answer is about his final report. It was, says a filing Mr. Smith made to Judge Aileen Cannon, submitted January 7. We comprehend that such a report is required to be submitted by all special counsel. What’s the logic of it, though, given that the target of Mr. Smith’s investigation is largely immune from federal charges?

The case, after all, is at a stage where all of us — prosecutors, potential jurors, senators, and even newspapermen and newspaperwomen — are required to give the indicted parties the presumption of innocence. That point was made by Mr. Smith himself when the grand jury first handed up the charges. The final report is likely to contain a mishmash of accusations, serious for sure, but completely untested in an adversarial proceeding.

So what’s the point of putting the final report out there? No such final report is required of regular prosecutors. When the Supreme Court of America tells a regular nickel-plated prosecutor that his target is immune, the G-men have to fold their tent and go home. No final report is needed to dirty up whatever target they were going after. Things, though, turn out to be different in respect of special counsels. A final report is required. 

That doesn’t mean that the dossier must see the light of day. That decision is up to Attorney General Garland, who can simply slide it inside his desk. Especially since the point of the report is to explain “the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.” Those have all been aired, and much of them have to do with presidential immunity, which Mr. Smith only grasped when it was explained to him by the Nine.

For a veteran prosecutor, Mr. Smith appeared shockingly heedless of the protections afforded to defendants in general, and to Trump — a former and future president — in particular. He sought to bend courts up and down the judiciary to his timetable, meaning he wanted verdicts before America went to vote. A political deadline, though, is not a legal one. And in any event the right to a speedy trial belongs not to the state, but to the “accused.”

Also gobsmacking was Mr. Garland’s failure to anticipate that his appointment of Mr. Smith without confirmation by the Senate would invite legal challenge. It took a hard-headed Floridian, Judge Cannon, to rule that the appointment was unlawful, and that Mr. Smith was no more empowered to prosecute than a private citizen. The attorney general sniffed that he never could have made a “basic mistake about the law.”

Mr. Smith’s end was, as the poet wrote, in his beginning. He was appointed on November 18, 2023 — two days after Trump declared his intent to take back the White House. President Biden was reportedly irate at Mr. Garland for dallying on his prosecution of his predecessor and potential rival for a second term. The attorney general cited, as a rationale, Trump’s “announcement that he is a candidate for President in the next election.”

No wonder the American people took the case into their own hands and returned the executive branch to President-elect Trump despite — or maybe because of — all of these prosecutions. Mr. Smith had ample opportunity to make his case, if not before a jury then in the court of public opinion. Do the Democrats really see it as in their interest to publish the report and dirty up The Donald at the start of his second term the way they did at the start of his first?