The US office of special counsel, an independent federal agency, confirmed to NBC News that it is investigating former Department of Justice prosecutor Jack Smith for possible violations of the Hatch Act.
Smith led investigations into Donald Trump’s part in the 6 January US Capitol riot and alleged mishandling of classified documents.
It comes as senior Republican lawmakers condemn the decision of their party leader, Trump, to fire the leading US labor market statistician after a report that showed the national economy added just 73,000 jobs – far fewer than expected – in July.
Trump claimed, without evidence, that the numbers were “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad” and the US economy was, in fact, “BOOMING” on his watch.
Here are the key US politics stories of the day:
Inquiry into ex-special counsel Jack Smith over Trump investigations
The confirmation of an investigation into Jack Smith comes after Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, a Republican, requested last week that Smith be investigated for “unprecedented interference in the 2024 election”.
The Hatch Act, a federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees. Trump, along with other prominent Republican lawmakers, have argued that Smith’s investigations into Trump amounted to illegal political activity.
Smith ultimately brought two criminal indictments against Trump in 2023 but resigned in January this year before either came to trial.
Republicans slam Trump’s firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics chief
The firing of Erika McEntarfer, who had been confirmed to her role in January 2024 during Joe Biden’s presidency, has alarmed members of Trump’s own party.
“If the president is firing the statistician because he doesn’t like the numbers but they are accurate, then that’s a problem,” said Wyoming Republican senator Cynthia Lummis. “It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the president had hoped for.”
Kentucky senator Rand Paul, another Republican, questioned whether McEntarfer’s firing was an effective way of improving the numbers.
Trump says Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s past comments make pardoning him ‘more difficult’
Donald Trump says he considers Sean ‘“Diddy” Combs “sort of half-innocent” despite his criminal conviction in federal court in July – but the president called pardoning the music mogul “more difficult” because of past criticism.
“When I ran for office, he was very hostile,” Trump said of the Bad Boy Records founder. “It’s hard, you know? We’re human beings. And we don’t like to have things cloud our judgment, right? But when you knew someone and you were fine, and then you run for office, and he made some terrible statements.”
Combs was found guilty on 2 July of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, with each leaving him facing up to 10 years in prison – but he was acquitted of more serious sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges.
Analysis: Durham disclosures further undermine Gabbard’s claims of plot against Trump
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US national intelligence, hoped to uncover evidence that Barack Obama and his national security team conspired to undermine Donald Trump in a slow-motion coup.
But a previously classified annexe to a report by another special counsel, John Durham – appointed towards the end of Trump’s first presidency – has further undermined Gabbard’s case.
It confirms that Russian spies were behind the emails that were originally released as the result of a Russian cyber-hack of internal Democratic information channels and which Trump supporters believed showed the campaign of Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, conspiring to accuse him of colluding with Moscow.
What else happened today:
The Trump administration terminated 1,902 National Institutes of Health grants totalling more than $4.4bn between January and the end of July, according to Grant Witness data. NIH followed guidance from the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and Trump’s executive orders to cut costs.
According to Donald Trump’s White House, the US economy is booming, inflation is dead and jobs are surging. A blizzard of economic reports has cast a pall on such claims in recent days.
Catching up? Here’s what happened 1 August 2025.
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