Former special counsel Jack Smith defended his prosecutions of now-President Donald Trump, while criticizing the conduct of the Justice Department under the Trump administration, in a recent appearance in the United Kingdom.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Andrew Weissmann at an event at the University College London on Oct. 8, Smith rejected the idea that his work on the two indictments he secured against Trump was politically motivated.
“The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case or who got chosen is ludicrous,” Smith said. “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 also criticized the workings of the Trump Justice Department, including the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey days after Lindsey Halligan, a former White House aide, replaced Erik Siebert as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he resigned under pressure from the Trump administration over his failure to bring criminal cases against Comey or New York State Attorney General Letitia James.
“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 day’s notice to secure an indictment a day before the statute of limitations ended,” he said in reference to Comey’s case. “That just reeks of lack of process.”
