'Careful what they wish for': Why MAGA’s 'unhinged' effort to 'villainize' Trump foe will backfire

President Donald Trump addressing the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on March 14, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian/Flickr)

During a Wednesday, October 8 panel discussion at University College London in England, former special counsel Jack Smith discussed his two criminal cases against Donald Trump. And he pushed back against MAGA claims that the indictments were politically motivated but was vehemently critical of the direction the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has taken under Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Smith told attendees it was "ludicrous" to claim that he went after Trump for political reasons in 2023 and 2024 but had no kind words about the Bondi-era DOJ.

The former special counsel explained, "I worked in the department for years — Republican, Democrat, Republican. I was the acting U.S. attorney in the first Trump administration in Tennessee. Nothing like what we see now has ever gone on. This case in New York City, where the case against (New York City Mayor Eric Adams) was dismissed in the hopes that he would support the president's political agenda. I mean, just so you know, nothing like it has ever happened that I've ever heard of.'"

Trump was facing four criminal indictments — two federal and two state — when he won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Smith prosecuted Trump for, he alleged, improperly storing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. But all four cases were doomed when Trump won the election.

MAGA Republicans are attacking Smith following the October 8 panel, but in his October 15 column, MSNBC's Steve Benen argues that "villainizing" Smith could come back to haunt them.

"The president continues to peddle baseless attacks against the former special counsel; the Trump Administration continues to push out officials who worked with Smith; Republicans continue to target Smith with unhinged and easily discredited conspiracy theories; and GOP lawmakers continue to see the prosecutor as a worthwhile target," Benen explains. "Indeed, nine months ago, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said he was prepared to call Smith to testify, and this week, the far-right Ohio Republican followed through, sending a letter to the former special counsel, demanding his closed-door testimony."

Benen emphasizes that if House Republicans subpoena Smith to testify in any congressional hearings, his testimony could make Trump and other Republicans — not Democrats — look bad.

"I understand why Republicans have invested so much time and effort into villainizing Smith," Benen writes. "He had the audacity to build strong criminal cases against Trump, rooted in voluminous evidence. And as the president works his way through his enemies list, he and his cohorts apparently still see value in trying to discredit the former special counsel. But they ought to be careful what they wish for."

Benen continues, "Smith is an experienced, credible and capable prosecutor, who's familiar with the evidence from Trump's criminal cases at a granular level. The more Republicans drag him back into the spotlight, the more Smith will be positioned to remind the public about alleged presidential felonies the party would probably prefer to forget."

Steve Benen's full MSNBC column is available at this link.

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