Former special counsel Jack Smith speaks to MS Now.
Courtesy: MS Now
Former special counsel Jack Smith said Thursday that under President Donald Trump, “we are facing an assault on the rule of law,” and he is “very concerned about the next election.”
Smith also said that a possible indictment of him by the Justice Department “could happen” given Trump’s hostility to prosecuting the president in two separate criminal cases before Trump returned to the White House.
Smith tells Nicole Wallace on MS Now “Deadline: The White House” “It makes me angry” to see public servants “disrespected for doing their jobs” by the Trump administration for their work on matters viewed as hostile toward the president and his allies or for other reasons.
“I think it’s really important that we stand up for them and let them know that there are a lot of people out there who support them and who are with them, and it’s not just people who are targeted and fired for doing their jobs without reason,” she said.
It was Smith’s first interview with a media outlet since resigning as special counsel 10 days before Trump is sworn into office on January 20, 2025.
A week after Trump’s inauguration, the DOJ fired four career prosecutors and others who had worked with Smith on the prosecution of Trump.
Smith told Wallace, “I think we are facing an attack on the rule of law that is unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime in type and scope.”
He referred to “retaliation lawsuits”, including the DOJ’s indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“One of the problems these days, besides the retaliation lawsuits, is that the Justice Department can’t do its job, right?” Smith said.
He said, “If you go to court … and the judge doesn’t trust you, you can’t do the basic things you need to do to represent the American people in court.” “And we’ve seen judges across the country say they can no longer trust prosecutors.”
Smith said that the young people he has talked to are not as interested in working for the DOJ as they used to be.
“I tell people, when I go to these universities and law schools, don’t give up on it,” he said.
Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor, was appointed in November 2022 as special counsel for two criminal investigations of Trump by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, who had just days earlier announced he would seek a second non-consecutive term in the White House.
The special counsel later obtained two grand jury indictments charging Trump with criminal charges.
In one case, Trump was charged with crimes related to efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election against former President Joe Biden, whose confirmation of victory by Congress was disrupted by the attack on the US Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.
Trump has been falsely claiming for years that he won that election, but widespread voting fraud cost him the victory.
In the second case, Trump was charged with crimes in connection with his possession of classified government documents after leaving the White House in January 2021 and efforts to prevent authorities from recovering them from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump denied wrongdoing in both cases.
In July 2024, the Trump-appointed judge, Eileen Cannon, dismissed the classified documents case, ruling that Smith was not legally appointed special counsel.
The DOJ appealed that decision, but abandoned that effort and also dismissed the election interference case after Trump was elected president, because the department’s policy prohibits prosecuting sitting presidents.