Trump 'will be in trouble' if 'pit bull' Jack Smith decides he's committed crimes: experts

Former President Donald Trump is already attacking special prosecutor Jack Smith by reviving the same playbook he employed against former special counsel Robert Mueller, but a new report from Axios expresses doubt that this tactic will prove successful.

Among other things, the report notes that Trump is now a private citizen who no longer enjoys the protections offered by the presidency against facing a criminal indictment while in office.

Additionally, the report states that Smith is inheriting multiple investigations that have already been in the works for months, whereas Mueller had to run a highly complex probe involving a hostile foreign power from scratch.

Additionally, Axios cites experts who believe that Smith is likely to be far more aggressive than Mueller ever was.

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"I was described by Steve Bannon... as a pit bull," former top Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissman wrote. "Jack Smith makes me look like a golden retriever puppy."

And Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen, whom Smith unsuccessfully tried to compel to reveal sources for his reports on American intelligence programs, argued that Trump has much to fear if the prosecutor decides that he has committed prosecutable crimes.

"Jack Smith came after me," Risen wrote in a recent column at The Intercept. "If he goes after Donald Trump with the same unrelenting ferocity, Trump will be in trouble."