Special Counsel Jack Smith is the latest darling of the left who will be the one to finally “get” former President Donald Trump.
That was based on Smith’s recently secured grand jury indictment of Trump for 37 counts related to the former president’s mishandling of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
But this week, The Washington Times released a report showing that Smith bends the rules in order to get his target, often leading to the defendants walking away.
As the Times noted, Smith, when he led the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section during the Obama administration, was regarded as “an ‘overzealous’ prosecutor who relies on ethically dubious tactics, including media leaks and enticing witnesses.”
“Smith and other prosecutors — some working on the Trump case — have followed a familiar playbook. The script earned Mr. Smith a reputation as a hard-driving, intense prosecutor, but a string of mistrials and overturned convictions led to sharp rebukes from federal judges,” the Times added.
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Former GOP Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona, who was convicted by Smith in 2013 on corruption and fraud charges, told the Times, “These are no white knights. They are very dangerous and will use any tactics to win at all costs.”
Renzi spent almost two years in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2021, an outcome resulting from a 190-page report his legal team provided to Trump’s Justice Department that revealed “repeated, concealed and corrosive” misconduct by Smith’s prosecutors, the Times reported.
The outlet also noted some of Smith’s high-profile fails. They included:
- A conviction of former Virginia Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell for accepting payments and gifts in violation of federal law that was overturned by the Supreme Court.
- A mistrial in the case of former Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who was accused of illegally using campaign cash to conceal his mistress and love child.
- Another mistrial in the prosecution of current Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, who was accused of accepting bribes.
- A conviction of former New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, that was overturned on appeal. Silver was found guilty at a second trial, but an appellate court tossed three of the six guilty verdicts.
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“Government lawyers have a higher duty to the truth and cause of justice, and that’s where some of these government prosecutors, like Mr. Smith, have fallen short,” McDonnell told the Times. “They are smart and well-credentialed, but they don’t seem to be exercising good judgment when it comes to this point.”
The Times noted that Smith exhibits a pattern in such cases, in part by using a “questionable piercing” of attorney-client privilege.
In Renzi’s case, for instance, a federal judge smacked Smith’s prosecutors for illegally recording his conversations with his lawyers. Smith did likewise to McDonnell, although a judge determined the conversations were subject to use by prosecutors because McDonnell was communicating with a government lawyer.
Smith has already succeeded in convincing a judge to allow his prosecutors to snoop into the notes of Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran.
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Another Smith tactic is to leak evidence favorable to the prosecution to the media, including secret grand jury materials. Smith allegedly did this to Renzi, McDonnell, and Menendez. The intent, Renzi told the Times, is to taint the jury pool against the defense and pressure judges to rule in favor of prosecutors.
In Trump’s case, according to the Times, that reportedly involved the release of a recording of a 2021 private meeting Trump held with staff in which he talked about possessing secret government documents that he had not declassified.
Smith also entices witnesses with promises. For example, in McDonnell’s case, prosecutors hit his wife with related charges, but then promised to drop them if she testified against her husband. In Renzi’s case, the government pledged to pay $25,000 to Phillip Aries, the cooperating witness in the case, but then reneged on the payment. The Times noted that Smith was aware of the deal and hid it from defense lawyers.
As for Trump’s case, Smith’s team has been hit with a formal complaint of prosecutorial misconduct by Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Walt Nauta, one of Trump’s lawyers who has been accused as a co-conspirator in the documents case. Woodward asserted that Smith’s team said his application to become a federal judge would be viewed more favorably if he convinced Nauta to flip on Trump.
The Times also reported that in trials Smith has a history of overhyping the charges and stretching the definitions of crimes.
In McDonnell’s case, for instance, which was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the high court found the case “distasteful” — not because of “tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns,” allegedly accepted by the defendant, but rather because of Smith’s “boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute.”
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