Former Special Counsel Jack Smith testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 22, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
When Donald Trump won the United States' 2024 presidential election, it marked a major turning point in then-special counsel Jack Smith's two federal cases against him: the election interference case and the Mar-a-Lago/classified documents case. Smith, citing the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president, asked Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss the election case — a request she granted "without prejudice."
The "without prejudice" part is important, as Chutkan wasn't attacking the merits of the case, but granting Smith's request to adhere to DOJ policy. And Smith was gone from DOJ by the time former President Joe Biden left the White House.
Smith kept a relatively low profile during the early months of Trump's second presidency, but in recent months, he has been speaking out about those cases. And now, MS NOW's Steve Benen stresses in a May 7 column, he is also calling out the direction DOJ has taken since Trump's return to the White House.
"As the prosecutor exited the stage," Benen says of Smith's resignation from DOJ before Biden left office, "he did so with relative silence. In fact, even many of those who followed his cases closely didn't even know what his voice sounded like, because Smith said so little, allowing his work to do the talking. But nearly a year and a half later, the former special counsel has made the transition from a lawyer who preferred silence to one who has quite a bit to say."
The New York Times' Glenn Thrush reported that Smith, at a private event in Washington, DC on April 20, described the Trump-era DOJ as "corrupted" and warned, "We have a Department of Justice today that targets people for criminal prosecution simply because the president doesn't like them…. We have a department that fails to investigate cases because they might uncover facts that are inconvenient narratives the president would like to press."
Benen argues that Smith's "condemnation of the" Trump-era DOJ "wasn’t just compelling given the degree to which it has been politically corrupted — it was also part of a larger pattern."
"Last fall, for example, the former special counsel delivered remarks at George Mason University and sounded the alarm about intensifying threats to the U.S. legal system," Benen observes. "'My career has been about the rule of law, and I believe that today, it is under attack like in no other period in our lifetimes,' Smith said. Around the same time, he appeared in a video, lending his public support to DOJ employees who had been fired or forced out by the Trump administration."
The "Rachel Maddow Show" producer continues, "Soon after, during an interview with former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann at the University College London, Smith condemned Republican criticisms of his work as 'ludicrous,' adding, 'I think the attacks on public servants, particularly nonpartisan public servants — I think it has a cost for our country that is incalculable, and I think that we — it's hard to communicate to folks how much that is going to cost us.' More recently, Smith also delivered private and public testimony before the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, which also didn't do his Republican detractors any favors. Smith was not able to make his case in court, but with increasing frequency, he's bringing his arguments to the public in forceful and unrestrained ways."