Republicans are cheering the end of special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutions of President-elect Trump just weeks after the former president’s election victory. Mr. Smith announced in court filings Monday that he would withdraw his charges, given that it is not permissible to prosecute a sitting president. 

The special counsel, who was appointed to his post by Attorney General Garland in 2022, said in two separate court filings that he would be withdrawing the charges against Trump at Washington for alleged attempts to steal the 2020 election, as well as the charges related to his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club after he left the White House.

In his motion to dismiss the Washington case, Mr. Smith wrote to Judge Tanya Chutkan that America has “never faced the circumstance here, where a federal indictment against a private citizen has been returned by a grand jury and a criminal prosecution is already underway when the defendant is elected President.”

Republicans were quick to pop champagne corks for their standard bearer after the motions to dismiss were filed. 

“Today’s decision by the DOJ ends the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump, and is a major victory for the rule of law. The American People and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to

uniting our country,” Trump’s incoming White House communications director, Steven Cheung, said in a statement. 

“These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought,” the president-elect himself wrote on X after Mr. Smith’s motions to dismiss were filed. “It was a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON.”

“If Donald J. Trump had lost an election, he may very well have spent the rest of his life in prison,” Vice President-elect Vance wrote on X. “These prosecutions were always political. Now it’s time to ensure what happened to President Trump never happens in this country again.”

“Still not tired of winning!” the official account for the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee wrote on X. The panel’s chairman, Congressman Jim Jordan, will stay in his position during the next Congress, where he will play a significant role in overseeing the Justice Department. 

The criminal prosecutions of Trump from Florida to Georgia to the nation’s capital to Manhattan dominated much of the coverage of the 2024 race, especially after he was convicted on 34 counts by a New York jury. The claim that he was a victim of political persecution was so central to Trump’s case that even his own presidential primary challengers, including Governor DeSantis, Ambassador Haley, Governor Burgum, and Vivek Ramaswamy all promised the then-former president a pardon. 

Shortly before he dropped out of the primary contest, Mr. DeSantis blamed his loss, in part, on Mr. Smith and other prosecutors going after the former president because it helped to galvanize Republican support for Trump. 

“If I could have one thing change, I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff,” Mr. DeSantis told the Christian Broadcasting Network in December 2023. The Florida governor said at the time that the indictments “just crowded out, I think, so much other stuff and it’s sucked out all the oxygen.”

Mr. Smith will more likely than not be forced to testify before Congress once Republicans take control in January. While he is reportedly planning on resigning from government altogether, he could be called back to speak with lawmakers about his processes and findings, where he could be a punching bag that Republicans have long sought. 

Two leading Senate Republicans, Senator Grassley, who will lead the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Johnson, who will lead a powerful investigative subcommittee, have already told Mr. Smith’s office to preserve records in the event of a congressional probe. 

“Considering the Justice Department’s past destruction of federal records relevant to congressional oversight and political bias infecting its decision-making process, we request that you preserve all records related to the Justice Department’s criminal investigations of former President Trump by Special Counsel Smith,” Messrs. Grassley and Johnson wrote in a letter to Mr. Garland and FBI director Christopher Wray on November 14. “The improper conduct of the past cannot be repeated in this matter; therefore, all records must be preserved so that Congress can perform an objective and independent review.”

Even if the congressional probes go nowhere, Mr. Smith could very well end up being investigated by the Justice Department once Trump installs his appointees. 

The president-elect’s choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi — who previously served for eight years as Florida’s attorney general — once claimed that the prosecutors who went after Trump should themselves be prosecuted. “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Ms. Bondi told Fox News in 2023. “The investigators will be investigated.”