Donald Trump welcomed South Korean President Lee Jae Myung to the White House this week, and the American president’s counterpart briefly commented on the criminal investigation into his predecessor in Seoul. After making a passing reference to a special prosecutor, Trump interrupted the South Korean translator.
“Is his name deranged Jack Smith, by any chance?” the Republican said, as part of an apparent attempt at humor. Trump added, “Deranged Jack. He’s a deranged, sick individual.”
It was a timely reminder that the former special counsel, who indicted Trump on a variety of alleged federal crimes, remains very much on the president’s mind. The mere mention of a special prosecutor in a foreign country generated a practically Pavlovian response in the Oval Office, despite the fact that Smith has largely faded from public view.
That said, Smith hasn’t completely exited the stage. The New York Times reported:
Lawyers for Jack Smith, the former special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump, have struck back for the first time against some of the accusations conservatives have leveled against him, denouncing an ethics complaint as ‘imaginary and unfounded.’ For months, Mr. Smith has remained silent as the president and some of his senior advisers, including top Justice Department officials, publicly attacked him, accusing Mr. Smith of engaging in wrongdoing for overseeing two criminal inquiries and indictments of Mr. Trump.
For those who might benefit from a refresher, NBC News reported earlier this month that federal officials had launched an investigation into Smith in response to Republican allegations that the former special counsel’s Trump investigations amounted to illegal political activity in violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits certain political activities by government officials.
The claims were, by any fair measure, ridiculous. In fact, there was literally no evidence whatsoever of Smith engaging in any kind of wrongdoing. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Smith to serve as a special counsel in November 2022 — two years before the 2024 presidential election — at which point he oversaw the federal investigations into Trump.
The prosecutor proceeded to collect voluminous evidence, to secure indictments and to charge Trump with a great many felonies, but at no point did Smith engage in any partisan political activities, making the basis for such an investigation from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel absurd.
Just as notably, it seems rather obvious that this move against Smith is part of a larger partisan vendetta from a party that’s eager to retaliate against those who dared to try to hold Trump accountable for his alleged crimes. Indeed, it was Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a close White House ally, who requested that the OSC investigate Smith for “unprecedented interference in the 2024 election,” despite the complete lack of evidence pointing to any interference.
Making matters just a bit worse, it was especially jarring to see Team Trump pretend to take the Hatch Act seriously after treating the same ethics law as a joke for years.
It’s against this backdrop that Smith’s lawyer sent a three-page letter to the acting special counsel, Jamieson Greer. “The predicate for this investigation is imaginary and unfounded,” the lawyers wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the New York Times. “Mr. Smith followed well-established legal principles in conducting the investigations into President Trump, and the courts presiding over the resulting prosecutions have already rejected the spurious allegations that the manner in which Mr. Smith prosecuted these cases was somehow improper.” Smith’s lawyers wrote that they “welcome the opportunity to engage with your office and are confident that as you become familiar with the facts and the record, you will conclude that there is no basis to find a violation of the Hatch Act and that these allegations are wholly without merit.” Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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