Jack Smith criticizes Trump for attack on rule of law

Former special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday said that under President Donald Trump, “We are facing an attack on the rule of law,” and said he is “very concerned about what’s going to happen next election.”

Smith also said that a potential indictment of him by the Department of Justice “could happen” given Trump’s animus toward him for prosecuting the president in two separate criminal cases before Trump returned to the White House.

Smith told Nicolle Wallace on MS NOW’s “Deadline: White House” that “it angers me” to see public servants “demonized for doing their jobs” by the Trump administration for their work on cases seen as hostile to the president and his allies or for other reasons.

“I think it’s really important that we stand up for them and let them know that there are a lot of people out there who back them and who are with them, and that’s not just the people who have been who’ve been targeted and fired for no reason for doing their jobs,” he said.

“I think we are facing an attack on the rule of law that is different in kind and scope to anything I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Smith said,

Smith, who had been a longtime federal prosecutor, was tapped by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 as special counsel for two criminal investigations of Trump, who just days earlier had announced he would seek a second non-consecutive term in the White House.

The special counsel later obtained two grand jury indictments criminally charging Trump.

In one case, Trump was accused of crimes related to his efforts to reverse his loss in the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden.

In the second case, Trump was charged with crimes in connection with his retention of classified government documents after leaving the White House in January 2021, and with efforts to prevent officials from recovering them from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

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