Who is Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought the Trump indictment?
Send a link to a friend
[June 09, 2023]
By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jack Smith, the U.S. special counsel who has
pursued criminal charges against former President Donald Trump over
retention of classified government records, has earned a reputation for
winning tough cases against war criminals, mobsters and crooked cops.
Appointed last November by Attorney General Merrick Garland to take over
two Justice Department investigations involving Trump, Smith now has
made history as the first federal prosecutor - though not the first
prosecutor - to secure an indictment against a current or former U.S.
president.
Manhattan District Attorney Bragg in April charged Trump with 34 felony
counts of falsifying business records involving hush money paid to a
porn star before the 2016 U.S. election.
When Smith is not busy competing in Ironman swim-cycle-run triathlon
races, according to his former colleagues, he is working as a dogged
investigator who is open-minded and not afraid to pursue the truth. They
described him as just as tenacious in seeking to have criminal charges
dropped for the innocent as he is to win convictions of the guilty.
"If the case is prosecutable, he will do it," said Mark Lesko, an
attorney at the firm Greenberg Traurig LLP who worked with Smith when
both were prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York. "He is
fearless."
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Jun/09/images/ads/current/siu_sda_PROMGARD_2023.png)
This case is unlike any other that Smith has brought because of who is
being charged. Trump served as president from 2017 to 2021 and is now
seeking to return to the White House, leading a crowded field of
candidates seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
One of the two investigations that Smith took over involved Trump's
handling of classified documents he retained after leaving the White
House in January 2021. The second examined efforts to overturn the
results of the 2020 U.S. election that Trump lost including a plot to
submit phony slates of electors to block Congress from certifying
Democrat Joe Biden's victory.
Grand juries in Washington have been hearing testimony from witnesses in
recent months for both investigations.
Trump's own attorney Evan Corcoran emerged as a key witness in the
documents investigation. Corcoran was compelled to testify before a
grand jury in March after a federal judge ruled that his conversations
with Trump were not shielded by a legal doctrine called attorney-client
privilege - which protects the confidentiality of certain communications
between lawyers and their clients - if Trump's comments were made in
furtherance of a crime.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Jun/09/images/ads/current/werth_sda_PROMGRAD_2023.png)
[to top of second column]
|
![](../images/060923PIX/news_m20.jpg)
Jack Smith is seen in an undated handout
photo released by the U.S. Justice Department after Attorney General
Merrick Garland announced his appointment as special counsel for the
Justice Department's investigations into the actions of former U.S.
President Donald Trump, in Washington, U.S., November 18, 2022. U.S.
Justice Department/Handout via REUTERS.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Jun/09/images/ads/current/graue_lda_WHITETRUCKpreowned_052223.jpg)
The election interference investigation - in which former Vice
President Mike Pence and others who served in top roles in Trump's
administration have been subpoenaed - remains ongoing.
SEARCH FOR INNOCENCE AND GUILT
Smith, a Harvard Law School grad who is not registered with any
political party, started as a prosecutor in 1994 at the Manhattan
District Attorney's Office under Robert Morgenthau, who was best
known for prosecuting mob bosses.
"There was just a real emphasis, from Morgenthau on down, on not
just going after convictions," said Todd Harrison, an attorney at
the firm McDermott Will & Emery who worked with Smith in
Morgenthau's office and later as a federal prosecutor.
"We were praised if we investigated something and demonstrated that
the target of the investigation was innocent," Harrison added.
In 1999, Smith started working at the U.S. Attorney's Office in
Brooklyn.
Smith was involved in the prosecution of Charles Schwarz, one of
several former New York City police officers who were implicated in
a high-profile police brutality case involving Abner Louima, a
jailed Black inmate who had been assaulted by police with a
broomstick.
Smith also won a murder conviction against Ronell Wilson, a drug
gang leader who murdered two undercover New York City police
officers, though a federal appeals court vacated the death penalty
verdict.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Jun/09/images/ads/current/hampton_sda_PROMGRAD_2023.png)
In 2008, Smith left to supervise war crime prosecutions at the
International Criminal Court in The Hague. He returned to the
Justice Department in 2010 to head its Public Integrity Section
until 2015.
More recently, Smith returned to war crimes cases in The Hague,
winning the conviction of Salih Mustafa, a former Kosovo Liberation
Army commander who ran a prison where torture took place during the
1998-99 independence conflict with Serbia.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Andy Sullivan and Will
Dunham)
[© 2023 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |