After years of investigating Donald Trump, Jack Smith says he had “tons of evidence” against the president. He also insists that politics had nothing to do with his work.
Smith spoke in a wide-ranging interview with former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann at University College London. The interview was released on Tuesday.
“The idea that politics would play a role in big cases like this, it’s absolutely ludicrous and it’s totally contrary to my experience as a prosecutor,” Smith said.
Smith led two major investigations into Trump. One focused on his retention of classified documents in Florida. The other looked at alleged interference in the 2020 presidential election.
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He praised the prosecutors on his team. “These are team players who don’t want to do anything but good in the world. They’re not interested in politics,” he said. “I get very concerned when I see how easy it is to demonize these people for political ends when these are the very sort of people I think we should be celebrating.”
Smith’s comments come as Republicans step up scrutiny of his work. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan requested an interview with him. Senate Republicans also criticized how the FBI obtained phone records from nine GOP lawmakers in 2023 during the January 6 investigation. They called it “political weaponization.”
He was critical of the current Justice Department. Smith cited the federal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and the decision to drop the criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams as examples of unusual behavior.
“Nothing like what we see now has ever gone on,” Smith said. “Process shouldn’t be a political issue, right? Like if there’s rules in the department about how to bring a case, follow those rules. You can’t say, ‘I want this outcome, let me throw the rules out.’”
He said career prosecutors are leaving because they do not want to break the rules. “Being told to get a specific outcome goes against everything they’ve been trained to do,” he said.
Smith also discussed presidential immunity. He said the courts considered Trump’s immunity, but the law focuses on the facts. About Trump’s classified documents case, he said, “The evidence to not give the documents back when the government even tried to get them back before there was a criminal investigation … and then after the investigation started, still refusing to give them back, and then trying to obstruct the investigation, that helps prove willfulness.”
He contrasted this with the investigation into President Biden. “That sort of evidence didn’t exist in the other case,” he said.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
