President Trump on Tuesday signed a memo suspending security clearances for employees at a law firm who assisted with former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the now-president.
White House staff secretary Will Scharf said in the Oval Office that the memo targeted Washington, D.C.-based law firm Covington & Burling, which provided pro bono legal services to Smith in his probes of Trump that resulted in two criminal indictments.
“As a result of those actions, we’re now going to be suspending and putting under review security clearances for employees at that firm and holding people responsible,” Scharf said.
Trump quipped that they would call the memo the “deranged Jack Smith signing,” invoking a pejorative he has frequently used to attack the former special counsel.
A spokesperson for Covington & Burling did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since taking office, Trump has targeted Smith and those associated with him, decrying the investigations into his conduct as “weaponization” of government. The Justice Department in January fired several prosecutors who worked on Trump’s criminal cases, saying they could not “trust” them.
The move impacted at least a dozen prosecutors who worked both on Trump’s election interference case as well as another for improperly retaining records at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Both were brought by Smith. Neither went to trial before Trump won a second term last November.