Smith: Charges against Trump not politically motivated

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Smith: Charges against Trump not politically motivated

Former special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday defended the federal charges against President Trump stemming from his investigation into the then-former president, charges that he said were not motivated by politics.

In an interview with former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann at University College London, Smith strongly denied the accusation that his investigation was politically motivated.

“The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case, or who got chosen, is ludicrous,” Smith told Weissmann.

Smith added that if he had told any former district attorney he worked for that he did not find a case to be legitimate because someone “was an enemy of the DA and we shouldn’t bring it, my boss would have tossed me out a window.”

The politics of anyone he has prosecuted “was entirely irrelevant to our work,” Smith continued.

“The people on my team were similar to what I saw throughout the [Department of Justice] throughout my career,” he said. “Apolitical people who wanted to do the right thing and do public service.”

When asked about the difference between classified documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and classified documents carried by former President Biden, Smith said the investigation into Biden did not go forward.

“One of the major differences between the two cases is the obstructive conduct in the case I investigated,” Smith said. “One reason is to prove an illegal possession of classified documents. You need to show that the defendant possessed the documents willfully, and that means he knew what he was doing was wrong.”

Smith said his case found that the refusal to give classified documents back to the National Archives and other federal entities “helps prove willfulness.”

“That sort of evidence didn’t exist in the other case,” he added.

Smith said that the persecution of perceived political enemies of the president has him concerned, and the cost of “attacks on public servants, particularly nonpartisan public servants” is “incalculable.”

“If you are driven to achieve certain outcomes no matter what, that’s a real problem,” Smith continued. “That’s not something I saw in the Department of Justice. … Nothing like what we see now has ever gone on.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Tuesday sent a letter demanding Smith to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. The letter requests that Smith give testimony regarding “the full extent to which the Biden-Harris Justice Department weaponized federal law enforcement,” Jordan wrote.

Smith resigned earlier this year after he investigated Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the first Trump administration’s mishandling of classified documents. He denied claims that the probe was meant to impact the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.