The Daily Fuckup

The Justice Department on July 7, 2023 released a spending disclosure that put a dollar figure on the early work of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office. For the period from Nov. 18, 2022, through March 31, 2023, the document listed $5,428,579 in direct and reimbursed expenditures by the special counsel’s office. It also said DOJ components tracked another $3,818,818 in related costs, including agent and support staff time and protective details when needed.

Added together, the disclosure shows more than $9.2 million in spending tied to the work during that reporting window. It does not show the full lifetime cost of the cases, and it does not attempt to measure what the investigations might cost later. It is a snapshot of one stretch of time, not a final accounting.

That matters because the report is about expenses, not merits. The filing does not say whether the classified-documents case or the election-interference investigation is strong or weak, justified or misguided. It simply documents what the department says it spent, and what it tracked, while the work was still in its early phase.

The disclosure also gives the public a paper trail for how DOJ recorded the expenses. That makes the accounting concrete, but it does not settle any legal questions. The numbers are significant because they are official, not because they answer anything about the outcome of the prosecutions.

For now, the only defensible read is narrow: DOJ said the special counsel operation was already expensive in its first months, and the department broke out the costs in writing. Anything beyond that — including claims about the total price of the Trump investigations — goes past what the document shows.