FBI agents who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of Donald Trump arranged in the final weeks of the Biden administration to keep their evidence in bureau custody until at least February 2030, according to internal memos and emails obtained by Just the News. The outlet reports that the records leave open the possibility of reviving the case after Trump’s second term ends.
What the memos say
Normal practice, Just the News reports, is for agents to give up evidence once a case is dismissed. Instead, the FBI’s Washington Field Office created a preservation order covering two years past the end of Trump’s second term. The memos cite ongoing litigation as the reason. One of the key documents, a “Case Closing” memo from the office’s CR-15 team, is dated February 5, 2025, a couple of weeks into Trump’s second term, when many holdover agents and leaders were still in place.
The memo is titled “Arctic Frost – Election Law Matters – Sensitive Investigative Matter.” It repeats the claims of criminality against Trump pursued by Smith and the bureau, and states that the evidence will be retained “until at least February 1, 2030, but in no case prior to the lift of the freeze and litigation hold.” A separate memo dated January 10, 2025, documents approval from an assistant special agent in charge to keep all evidence. It says the deputy special counsel concurred.
Just the News points out that February 2030 falls when Trump would again be a former president, outside the Justice Department guidance against prosecuting a sitting one.
The closing memo summarizes the investigation’s findings. It says the inquiry was opened on “specific and articulable facts and circumstances” that people affiliated with the Trump campaign violated federal law. It alleges that after losing the 2020 election Trump “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” with plans to overturn results in seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These are the FBI’s allegations, not court findings.
Background
After Trump won the November 2024 election, Smith sought to dismiss his case “without prejudice,” meaning charges could be refiled later. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, citing the Office of Legal Counsel’s position that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted, granted the request on November 25, 2024.
The closing memo quotes an email from Smith’s deputy special counsel, identified from the documents as J.P. Cooney, who is now running in a Democratic congressional primary in Virginia. Cooney wrote in January 2025 that the special counsel’s office had to decline further prosecution of Arctic Frost. The dismissal, he wrote, “was not based on the merits of the prosecution, which the SCO stands behind,” and the declination “should not be read to exonerate any particular person.” A second FBI memo says the published version omitted one line from his email: “Mr. Trump was charged with participating in crimes with at least six co-conspirators.”
Smith made a similar argument to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in a letter on January 7, 2025. It answered a January 6 letter from Trump’s defense lawyer Todd Blanche, now acting attorney general, who had urged Garland to block release of Smith’s final report and wrote that Smith sought to “perpetuate his false and discredited accusations.” Smith replied that the dismissal “does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution.”
Reaction
FBI Director Kash Patel told Just the News the bureau shut down the CR-15 squad. “The FBI exists to protect the country, not to preserve political prosecutions for a future administration,” he said.
Bud Cummins, a former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas, also spoke to the outlet. “If the case cannot or should not be prosecuted, the prosecutor should close the file,” he said, “not write a political narrative, preserve a roadmap, and leave behind a prosecution kit for future use.”
Records released last year showed that Garland, then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray signed off on opening the Arctic Frost inquiry, which concerned the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
