A career prosecutor named Jack Smith. I hope he knows what he’s getting into:
This will mean nothing to the Republicans who will do everything possible to paint him as a hardcore left wing partisan and their people will believe it. Maybe some of the normies in the suburbs might be ok with it, however.
Hopefully, this will not create a huge delay but prosecutions, if there are any, won’t be happening any time soon. That’s what Trump wanted by announcing for president and he got it.
Update:
Jack Smith, the former head of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, will oversee the investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of sensitive government documents at his home in Florida, and key aspects of the separate inquiry into his actions before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, Mr. Garland said during a news conference.
Mr. Garland, who has sought to insulate the department from claims that the investigations into Mr. Trump were motivated by politics, said Mr. Trump’s announcement on Tuesday that he was running for president in 2024, coupled with the possibility President Biden would also run, prompted him to take what he described as an “extraordinary” step.
“Such an appointment underscores the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters,” Mr. Garland said at a hastily arranged news conference at department headquarters.
“I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice,” Mr. Smith said in a statement. He vowed that the investigations would move forward expeditiously “to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”
Under federal regulations, special counsels like Mr. Smith have greater day-to-day autonomy than ordinary prosecutors but ultimately remain under the attorney general’s supervision and control. Among other things, if Mr. Smith were to eventually decide to seek Mr. Trump’s indictment, Mr. Garland would still have to sign off.
The order appointing Mr. Smith, signed on Friday by Mr. Garland, named Mr. Trump in connection with the documents case. It also authorized the special counsel to “conduct the ongoing investigation into whether any person or entity violated the law” in connection with the “lawful transfer of power” after the 2020 elections.
Mr. Smith, known as Jack, has served as the chief prosecutor in The Hague prosecuting war crimes in Kosovo since 2018. He was not present for the announcement because he recently injured his knee in a biking accident, a department official said.
As a prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, Mr. Smith was known as a confident, charismatic person who did not shy away from difficult or controversial cases, former colleagues of his said.
“Jack is the consummate prosecutor and public servant: intelligent, balanced and fair,” said James McGovern, a partner at Hogan Lovells who worked with Mr. Smith for years at the federal prosecutor’s office in Brooklyn. “I have no idea what his political beliefs are because he’s completely apolitical. He’s committed to doing what is right.”
Special counsels are semi-independent prosecutors who by Justice Department regulations can be appointed for high-level investigations when there can be a conflict of interest, or the appearance of it. They can only be removed if they commit misconduct, and the department must tell Congress if an attorney general overrules some step a special counsel wants to take.
Mr. Smith, a graduate of Harvard Law School, had investigated war crimes for the International Criminal Court and helped prosecute police officers in a police brutality case in New York before taking on the role that most overlaps with his new assignment: running the Justice Department’s public integrity section from 2010 to 2015.
At the time he took it over, the section, which handles government corruption investigations, was reeling from the collapse of a criminal case against former Senator Ted Stevens. In his first few months, the section closed several high-profile investigations into members of Congress without charges. But in an interview that year with The New York Times, Mr. Smith denied that the section had lost its nerve on his watch.
“I understand why the question is asked,” Mr. Smith said. “But if I were the sort of person who could be cowed — ‘I know we should bring this case, I know the person did it, but we could lose, and that will look bad’ — I would find another line of work. I can’t imagine how someone who does what I do or has worked with me could think that.”
His tenure included the prosecution of the former Democratic governor of Virginia, Robert McDonnell, on corruption charges — he was convicted, but the Supreme Court overturned it. It also included the successful prosecution of former Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona, who in 2013 was sentenced to three years in prison. (Mr. Trump later pardoned Mr. Renzi.)
Mr. Smith then worked for several years as the No. 2 federal prosecutor in Nashville, Tenn., before returning to Europe for another round of working on war crimes cases.
It’s hard to know what this all means. He sounds like a straight arrow. But then so did John Durham.