Special counsel budgets could be slashed by millions: Justice department projections

The Justice department could significantly slash its special counsel budget for the next fiscal year, according to a new report.

The projection, which appears in President Joe Biden's budget delivered to Congress Monday, estimates the department will spend $4 million compared with the $29 million budgeted to the previous fiscal year, according to Politico.

Special counsels are currently pursuing criminal cases in Florida and Washington D.C. against former President Donald Trump as well as a federal tax fraud case and a Delaware gun possession case against President Joe Biden's son Hunter.

A Justice department spokesperson didn't provide Politico with a comment.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has brought two criminal cases against Trump, one accusing him of mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, the other charging the former president with conspiring to subvert the 2020 election.

The latter case has been put on pause until the Supreme Court decides whether Trump was protected by presidential immunity in the months before the U.S. Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021.

Smith racked up about $12.8 million in expenditures involving personnel, rent and expenses and some $11 million in spending by other Justice department agencies over a 10-month span in the fiscal year, according to the outlet.

Meanwhile, special counsel David Weiss has been building two cases that zero in on Hunter Biden.

One involves gun charges in Delaware — a case that currently does not have a court date — and the other, slated to begin in June, involves accusations that the president's son failed to pay his taxes for several years.

Those investigations are slated to wind down by next year with some residual carry-over, according to the Politico report.

"The decline in projected spending is, in some ways, intuitive," the report notes. "Two of the four special counsels that operated during Biden’s tenure — John Durham and Robert Hur — have concluded their probes."