Former special counsel Jack Smith, whose historic prosecution of Donald Trump was upended by the president’s reelection last year, insisted that the pair of criminal cases he brought against Trump were untainted by politics.
But the current Trump Justice Department is different, Smith said in a recent wide-ranging interview with former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann at the University College London made available Tuesday.
Smith criticized how the Trump DOJ has handled several-high profile cases and lamented the impact its moves will have on the justice system writ large.
His comments provide a window into the thinking of a man the public rarely saw during his yearslong investigation of Trump and come as Republicans are ramping up probes into how Smith worked.
Here are the key takeaways:
Defends his investigation and says politics played no role
During the discussion with Weissmann, who worked on former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Smith said it was “absolutely ludicrous” that politics would play a role in his probes into Trump.
“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 supervised a team of prosecutors who
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