President Donald Trump has suggested that former Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith to be criminally charged, and Smith has even said he expects an indictment during his recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. But one of Smith's former colleagues said Republicans aren't likely to be successful in prosecuting him.
In a Thursday segment on CNN's "The Source," Karen Friedman Agnifilo — who worked alongside Smith in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office — told host Kaitlan Collins that her former colleague doesn't have "anything to hide," and that he'll continue to be willing to talk about his two investigations into Trump at length, in public. She further argued that his words "words spoke for themselves, and couldn't be mischaracterized."
"He's proud of his work, and he knows that he is a target," she said. "The administration has made it very clear that he's a target, but I don't think he's worried about anything because he knows he didn't do anything wrong."
Collins responded that Trump has accused Smith of perjury, and that Republicans on the Judiciary Committee sought to make the argument that Smith was targeting the president "for political purposes." Agnifilo conceded that while the Trump DOJ may "try to find something," that didn't mean any charges would stick.
"We all saw what happened [on January 6, 2021]. And Jack Smith investigated it and he investigated. He followed the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor. Those were words that he used. That's how we're all trained as prosecutors, to do that," she said. "And you don't have an outcome in mind. And he said that once he did that, once he followed those breadcrumbs, it led to one place. It led to Donald Trump."
"And it's very different than today's Justice Department, where they target an individual, and then they look for whatever they can find to try and pin it on them," she continued. "We'll see if there's anything that they'll be able to find that Jack Smith could have done. I think it's going to be very difficult."
"He's a very straight shooter. He always has been. He's always been somebody who does the right thing. He's never been political," she added. "I couldn't tell you, even though we worked together years ago, I couldn't tell you what his political leanings are, left or right. He he's just a very kind of by-the-book guy who tries to do the right thing."
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