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Smith Report Fight Started Jan. 7, Not Dec. 26
The public fight over Jack Smith’s report began on Jan. 7, 2025, when he submitted Volume One to the Justice Department and the release battle hit court the same day.
Edition · December 26, 2024
Trump World’s Holiday Hangover
A thin but still nasty day for the incoming Trump machinery: one court fight tightened around the special counsel report, and the transition’s ethics rot kept drawing scrutiny as the year wound down.
December 26, 2024 was not a blockbuster day in Trump-world, but it was still a reminder that the president-elect’s orbit kept generating self-inflicted problems even over the holidays. The most concrete development was the legal fight over Jack Smith’s final report, which remained entangled in emergency court action and Trump-aligned efforts to keep the details buried. Separately, the transition’s dark-money model and internal pay-to-play allegations kept the stink of the coming administration front and center. None of it was a policy triumph; all of it was another preview of a second term already starting under a cloud.
Closing take
The year ended the way Trump’s political operation so often does: with lawyers, money, and secrecy doing the heavy lifting where competence should be. Even on a light news day, the throughline was obvious — the incoming administration kept turning routine governance into a fog machine, and the courts kept being asked to clean up after it.
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Trump’s Transition Kept Feeding The Dark-Money Stink
As 2024 closed, scrutiny kept building around Trump’s unusually secretive transition funding and the pay-to-play atmosphere around his inner circle.