Former Justice Department attorney Jack Smith called out President Donald Trump and his administration in a rare interview, stating that he had “tons of evidence” against him concerning the criminal case where Trump mishandled classified documents in the months before the 2024 presidential election. That case would be dropped right before the election.
Smith spoke with former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman at the University College London Faculty of Laws, where Weissman is currently a visiting professor on Oct. 8. The talk, entitled “The State of the United States: A Conversation with Jack Smith” was published online on Tuesday (Oct. 14). The attorney was named Special Counsel to investigate the document mishandling allegations from 2023, leading to Trump being indicted by a federal grand jury. Trump’s supporters would call the indictment hypocritical, as former President Joe Biden also had kept classified documents from his time in office.
“Both cases involved classified documents; the difference is the facts. In my particular case, we had tons of evidence of willfulness and obstructive evidence: publicly saying ‘these are my documents’ or things like that, and ‘I can keep them,’” Smith said. He added, “The government even tried to get them back before there was a criminal investigation, and then after the investigation started, [Trump] still [refused] to give them back, and then [tried] to obstruct the investigation. That sort of evidence didn’t exist in the other case.”
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, dismissed the 2023 case citing that his appointment was illegal. Smith would also drop a 2020 election tampering case against Trump after his win last November, citing the standing precedent where the DOJ doesn’t prosecute sitting presidents. Smith would resign in January before Trump took office, but Trump has repeatedly attacked Smith, and Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio has asked Smith to testify before a House committee on his findings.
Smith was frank about the Trump administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department against his foes, such as former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. “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,” he said.
