Former special counsel Jack Smith delivered impassioned remarks when speaking to the University College London about President Donald Trump's second administration and the way in which he has weaponized the government against his political foes.
In a discussion with former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann, Smith walked through some of the decisions he made when bringing charges against Trump on accusations of stealing classified documents and the case around the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.
He began by saying that the first thing he learned as a prosecutor was to ensure that all of the investigation that could be done was completed, because it's important to know how the defense will try their case, so they can prepare for the rebuttal.
"I was taught as a young prosecutor, no fear, no favor. I was taught as a young prosecutor, you do the right things, you do it the right way, and for the right reasons," he told Weissmann.
"So, I think, making sure processes are applied equally, that is critical, and it's a good way for you to measure if something is legitimate or not. If you see someone who is driven by an outcome and they're going to get that outcome no matter what, [you] should be very suspicious of that whether it's as a prosecutor or a judge," Smith said.
At a later point in the discussion, he pointed again to the treatment of the DOJ and the politicalization and weaponization of it.
"What I see now — and it goes back to the analysis that I gave you before. If you are driven to achieve certain outcomes no matter what, that's a real problem," said Smith. "That's not something I saw in the Department of Justice. And I think it it bears mentioning, you know, I worked in the department for years, Republican, Democrat, Republican. I worked in — I was the acting US attorney in the first Trump administration in Tennessee. Nothing like what we see now has ever gone on."
He pointed specifically to the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, which critics say was dismissed in the hopes he would support Trump's agenda.
"I mean, just so you know, nothing like it has ever happened that I've ever heard of," said Smith. "Recently, we had this issue of, I guess it was people in the Defense Department using Signal to communicate with each other about war plans. Clearly classified information. I can tell you, Andrew will tell you, there is no administration, Republican or Democrat, that does not open an investigation in that situation. Nothing where the lives of servicemen are put at risk. Zero. Never happens."
Third, he cited the case against former FBI Director James Comey.
"There's a process to secure an indictment. There's a process of predication, having some evidence before you do that," Smith explained. "And again, I only know what I see myself in the media, but the career prosecutors, the apolitical prosecutors who analyzed this said there wasn't a case. And, so they brought somebody in who had never been a criminal prosecutor on a days notice to secure an indictment a day before the statute of limitations ended. That just reeks of lack of process."
