In a rare interview, former Justice Department attorney Jack Smith claimed he had “tons of evidence” against President Donald Trump in the criminal case against him for allegedly mishandling classified documents, a case that was ultimately dismissed in the lead up to the 2024 election.
Smith was tasked with investigating Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents in 2023, an investigation that led to Trump being indicted by a federal grand jury on multiple charges in June of that year. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges, and both he and his supporters spouted claims of being politically targeted given former President Joe Biden was also discovered to have retained classified documents from his time as vice president.
Smith, who was speaking at the University College London in an interview published on Tuesday, was asked about the case, and explained that the key difference between the investigations into Trump and Biden was that with Trump, the evidence of obstruction and other wrongdoing was clear.
“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.
“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.”
Smith did not investigate Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, but was familiar enough with the investigation to proclaim that there was no “willfulness” on Biden’s part to obstruct the federal government’s attempts to retrieve said documents, a key component of the crime of "willful retention of national defense information,” for which Trump was indicted.
“Both cases involved classified documents; the difference is the facts,” Smith said. “The rule of law allows for different outcomes when the facts are different. One of the major differences between the two cases is the obstructive conduct in the case that I investigated.”
Smith has become a target for Trump, who last week called Smith “deranged” and “a real sleazebag” following reports that Smith had sought call log info of some Republican lawmakers as part of his separate investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.