Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory marked the beginning of the end of then-special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal cases. Almost immediately after Election Day, the prosecutor and his team grudgingly wrapped up their work — not because they wanted to or because they lacked compelling evidence, but because of Justice Department guidelines related to prosecuting a sitting president.
Left without options, Smith resigned, and his criminal indictments against the president effectively evaporated.
As the prosecutor exited the stage, he did so with relative silence. In fact, even many of those who followed his cases closely didn’t even know what his voice sounded like, because Smith said so little, allowing his work to do the talking.
But nearly a year and a half later, the former special counsel has made the transition from a lawyer who preferred silence to one who has quite a bit to say. The New York Times reported:
Jack Smith, the special counsel who twice indicted President Trump, accused the Justice Department of having been “corrupted” by Trump loyalists he claimed were demolishing its credibility and seeking to undermine the rule of law.
Mr. Smith’s remarks, made last month in a private discussion at the Cosmos Club in Washington, represented his sharpest criticism of the department since leaving his post early last year.
“We have a Department of Justice today that targets people for criminal prosecution simply because the president doesn’t like them,” Smith said in the hourlong discussion on April 20, according to a video obtained by the Times that was shared with attendees. He added, “We have a department that fails to move on cases because they might uncover facts that are inconvenient to narratives the president would like to press.”
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Trump’s DOJ said, “I would expect nothing less from Jack Smith.”
I’m not altogether sure what that meant, though it’s worth noting for context that Smith’s condemnation of the DOJ wasn’t just compelling given the degree to which it has been politically corrupted; it was also part of a larger pattern.
Last fall, for example, the former special counsel delivered remarks at George Mason University and sounded the alarm about intensifying threats to the U.S. legal system.
“My career has been about the rule of law, and I believe that today it is under attack like in no other period in our lifetimes,” Smith said.
Around the same time, he appeared in a video, lending his public support to DOJ employees who had been fired or forced out by the Trump administration.
Soon after, during an interview with former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann at the University College London, Smith condemned Republican criticisms of his work as “ludicrous,” adding, “I think the attacks on public servants, particularly nonpartisan public servants — I think it has a cost for our country that is incalculable, and I think that we — it’s hard to communicate to folks how much that is going to cost us.”
More recently, Smith also delivered private and public testimony before the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, which also didn’t do his Republican detractors any favors.
Smith was not able to make his case in court, but with increasing frequency, he’s bringing his arguments to the public in forceful and unrestrained ways.
UPDATE (May 7, 2025, 12:04 p.m. ET): In response to a question from MS NOW, Smith’s spokesperson did not comment on Smith’s comments.
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