Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two criminal cases against Donald Trump, spoke out against the Trump administration in a rare interview posted Tuesday.
Smith, who resigned from the Justice Department in January shortly before Trump returned to office as president, warned that attacks on public servants would have an “incalculable” cost on the country.
“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,” Smith said in an interview last week with former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman at University College London Faculty of Laws, where Weissman is a visiting professor.
Reached for comment on Smith's interview, the White House said, “The Trump Administration will continue to deliver the truth to the American people while restoring integrity and accountability to our justice system.” The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Smith's investigation led to two indictments against Trump, one for his handling of classified documents and another for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump denied all wrongdoing and blasted both cases as politically motivated "witch hunts."
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, dismissed the classified documents case on the grounds that Smith's appointment was illegal. Smith dropped the 2020 election case after Trump's November win, citing DOJ policy on prosecuting sitting presidents.
In a report released before he resigned in January, Smith said Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” on Jan. 6, adding he believed Trump would have been convicted for his acts had he not been re-elected president last year.
Since he assumed office in January, Trump has repeatedly blasted Smith, calling him “deranged.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked Smith on Tuesday to testify about his prosecutions of Trump.
In his interview with Weissman, Smith warned of threats to the independence of the judiciary, saying judges and prosecutors “should not be thinking of their jobs as popularity contests.”
“They need the room and space to make decisions that some people might not like," Smith said.
The Justice Department under Trump has taken swift action against people who worked on the criminal and civil cases against him.
On Friday, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who oversaw a civil case against Trump and his businesses, was indicted last week on bank fraud charges. The Justice Department also last month indicted former FBI Director James Comey, who clashed with Trump during the president’s first term over the DOJ investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Trump suggested in a Truth Social post on Sunday that Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who worked on Trump’s first impeachment trial, could also be a target.
The Trump administration has also forced out several senior FBI officials who worked on cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including special agents involved in Smith’s investigations of Trump. The FBI last week also took action against three special agents who worked in connection with Smith’s probes after GOP senators said the FBI analyzed personal cellphone data of nine congressional Republicans.
Describing his first job in the Manhattan district attorney's office, Smith said it would have been inappropriate to bring or not bring a case for political reasons, saying the suggestion alone would have gotten him tossed “out a window.”
“If I said, ‘Hey, I wasn’t going to bring this case, because it’s not a legitimate case on the facts and law, but I saw that he was an enemy of the [district attorney], and maybe we shouldn’t bring it.’ My boss, my first boss, he would have tossed me out a window. Right? Tossed me out a window,” Smith said.
Smith spoke about his time as chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which is charged with fighting public corruption, saying that while he worked there, he was unaware of the politics of his subordinates “because it was entirely irrelevant to our work.”
Smith, noting that he worked in the Justice Department for years during both Republican and Democratic administrations — including as an acting U.S. attorney during the first Trump administration — made note of New York Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case, which a federal judge dismissed in April at the request of the Justice Department.
