Lawyers for former special counsel Jack Smith on Monday defended him in the face of an ethics probe into his actions investigating President Trump before the 2024 election, referring to the basis of the investigation as “imaginary and unfounded.”
Earlier this month, the Office of the Special Counsel — which is not affiliated with Smith’s former position — launched a probe into Smith’s handling of two criminal investigations into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents and alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
Photo by Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images 
Monday’s letter, a copy of which was obtained by CBS News, was the first response from Smith and his representatives after the independent federal agency confirmed that it had launched an investigation into Smith for potential violations of the Hatch Act, a federal law that “limits certain political activities of federal employees.”
In a three-page letter to the acting head of the office, Jamieson Greer, Smith’s attorneys Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski, said there is “no basis” for an accusation that Smith violated the Hatch Act and that the allegations of wrongdoing are “wholly without merit.”
“Mr. Smith was fiercely committed to making prosecutorial decisions based solely on the evidence, he steadfastly followed applicable Department of Justice guidelines and the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and he did not let the pending election influence his investigative or prosecutorial decision-making,” Smith’s attorneys said.
Smith was appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to take over the two investigations, but resigned in January, days before Mr. Trump returned to office.
GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas called for an investigation into Smith’s conduct and alleged that Smith had pushed for a “rushed trial” of Trump before the 2024 presidential election.
“They were the actions of a political actor masquerading as a public official,” Cotton wrote on X. “That’s why I’ve asked this unprecedented interference in the 2024 election be immediately investigated by OSC.”
Smith’s attorneys, however, argued that politics did not play a role in the prosecutions and that no laws prohibited Smith from continuing his prosecutions into Mr. Trump going into the home stretch of the campaign trail.
“This investigation is premised on a partisan complaint that suggests the ordinary operation of the criminal justice system should be disrupted by the whims of a political contest. But the notion that justice should yield to politics is antithetical to the rule of law,” Smith’s attorneys wrote. “Moreover, the suggestion that the Hatch Act can be violated by taking routine procedural steps to prosecute a case involving a candidate for public office is unprecedented and risks interfering with the enforcement of our federal criminal laws.”
Smith’s actions, the attorneys said, “were consistent with the decisions of a prosecutor who has devoted his career to following the facts and the law, without fear or favor and without regard for the political consequences, not because of them.”
In May, Mr. Trump chose right-wing podcast host and MAGA loyalist Paul Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, but his nomination is stalled in the Senate. Mr. Trump fired the former head of the office, Hampton Dellinger, in February.
In addition to investigations into Smith, the investigators who worked with him have also been investigated or fired.
At least 35 Justice Department employees who investigated President Trump and his allies have been fired since Mr. Trump took office, sources told CBS News, and the staffers were identified by the Justice Department’s so-called “weaponization working group,” which Attorney General Pam Bondi established soon after she was confirmed.
contributed to this report.
