Former special counsel Jack Smith excoriated the Justice Department over its indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, saying it “reeks of a lack of process,” and he also weighed in on other actions by the department under the Trump administration.
In an interview with former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman at the University College London, Smith said, “The apolitical prosecutors who analyzed this said there wasn’t a case, and so they brought somebody in who had never been a criminal prosecutor on days’ notice to secure an indictment a day before the statute of limitations ended.”
Smith, who investigated and prosecuted President Trump before his reelection, accused Attorney General Pam Bondi of being “driven to achieve certain outcomes, no matter what,” particularly in the case against Comey, who is accused of lying to Congress.
Smith led the Justice Department probes of Mr. Trump related to his conduct after the 2020 presidential election, and to his handling of classified records after his first term ended. The cases both resulted in criminal charges against Mr. Trump, and he pleaded not guilty to all charges and denied wrongdoing.
The interview with Weissman, was posted online Tuesday but recorded on Oct. 8, before New York Attorney General Letitia James was also indicted for mortgage fraud by the same U.S. attorney’s office that brought charges against Comey in late September.
On the Justice Department’s decision to direct federal prosecutors to drop their corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for his cooperation with the administration’s immigration policies, Smith said, “Nothing like it has ever happened that I’ve ever heard of.”
He also criticized the Justice Department for not investigating the “Signal-gate” scandal in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and former national security adviser Mike Waltz used the encrypted messaging app Signal to discuss planned military strikes in Yemen with other top national security officials.
“There is no administration, Republican or Democrat, that does not open an investigation in that situation,” Smith said. “Nothing — where the lives of servicemen are put at risk, zero —never happens.”
The former special counsel also defended his investigations into Mr. Trump and denied any suggestion that they had been driven by partisan politics.
“The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case or who got chosen [to work on the case] is ludicrous,” Smith said, noting that his entire team of investigators and staff had been fired by the Trump administration.
“Everybody who worked on my team was fired, not just the lawyers, but the administrative staff as well,” Smith said, adding that hundreds of Justice Department attorneys and staff have left because they are “being asked to do things that they think are wrong, and because they’re not political people, they’re not going to do them.”
In August, the Office of the Special Counsel — which is not affiliated with Smith’s former position — launched an ethics probe into his handling of the investigations. His attorneys say there’s no basis for the investigation.
Smith’s two cases against Mr. Trump were ultimately closed last year after he won the presidential election because under Justice Department policy, sitting presidents are not prosecuted. Smith left the Justice Department shortly afterwards.
