Walt Nauta, an aide to Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to federal charges related to the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. Nauta has been accused of helping Trump obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation into records recovered from Mar-a-Lago in 2022. CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane reports on what comes next.
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Washington — The Arizona secretary of state’s office received and complied with a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith’s office related to the federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, spokesperson Paul Smith-Leonard confirmed to CBS News.
The subpoena requested documents related to a pair of election-related lawsuits filed in 2020 by the Trump campaign and the former head of Arizona’s Republican party, Kelli Ward. Contact between Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ office and Smith’s team began in May and an outside counsel hired by the office — Coppersmith Brockelman — responded to the grand jury request, said Smith-Leonard.
The Arizona Republic first reported the existence of the subpoena.
The 2020 battleground state became a focal point of former President Donald Trump and his supporters’ attempts to reverse the results of the presidential election.
Prosecutors in Smith’s office continue to examine an alleged fake electors scheme in which supporters of the former president worked to overturn the certification of the electoral college votes, which were won by President Biden, via an alternate group of swing-state representatives pledging support to Trump.
As part of the federal probe, Georgia’s Secretary of State — Brad Raffenspereger — spoke with investigators last month and representatives from Nevada appeared before a grand jury in Washington, D.C.
On Wednesday, former Arizona Republican Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers — who publicly testified before the House Jan. 6 committee last year about his resisting pressure from Trump and his allies to overturn election results — told CNN he recently spoke with Smith’s investigators.
The subpoena of the Arizona Secretary of State was the second received by the office in recent months connected to the federal probe, according to a person familiar with the matter. The first request came last year, during the administration of Arizona’s previous secretary of state, and was processed by the same outside law firm that has handled much of the office’s responses to 2020-related matters.
Smith’s office declined to comment.
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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger spoke with federal prosecutors Wednesday as part of an investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The meeting likely focused on a 2021 phone call between Raffensperger and then-President Trump, where Trump was recorded telling Raffensperger to “find” the votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win in Georgia. CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa joins “Prime Time” to discuss the significance of the interview.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump addresses The Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 2023 “Road to Majority” conference in Washington, U.S., June 24, 2023.
Tasos Katopodis | Reuters
Hours after the release of an audio tape in which Donald Trump discusses a classified document that he kept after leaving office, the former president intensified his attacks on the special counsel who oversees the probe that led to Trump’s historic indictment.
In an all-caps social media post Tuesday morning, Trump decried the criminal charges that have been filed against him in federal court and asked “somebody” to “explain” his position to special counsel Jack Smith, “his family, and his friends.”
A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment on Trump’s latest broadside against Smith, who was tapped last year to lead multiple criminal investigations involving the former president.
Trump was indicted on charges stemming from his alleged mishandling of classified documents and efforts to keep them from the government after leaving office. He pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts, including willful retention of national defense information and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Trump’s post claimed that “as president of the United States, I come under the Presidential Records Act,” instead of the Espionage Act, which is the law cited in 31 of the counts against Trump. Fact-checkers have disputed Trump’s characterizations of both laws.
That statement on Truth Social was not the first time Trump has referenced Smith’s personal circle. On the morning of his arraignment in federal court in Florida, the ex-president wrote that Smith is a “Trump Hater, as are all his friends and family.” That post also asserted without evidence that materials found in the boxes of records at the center of the classified documents case were “probably ‘planted.’”
Trump’s latest post followed the Monday night release by CNN of an audio recording of a July 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, in which Trump references a document that he says is “highly confidential” and “secret.”
“This was done by the military, and given to me,” Trump said in the tape, which was recorded months after he left the White House. Trump indicates that the document has to do with a plan of attack on Iran.
“As president I could have declassified it. Now I can’t,” he said in the recording.
Trump was reportedly speaking to a writer and publisher who were working on a book about former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Two of Trump’s staff members were also present.
None of them had security clearances or any need to know the classified information referenced by Trump, according to the indictment, which references a transcript of the recording.
Trump’s attacks on Smith fit the pattern and style that the former president has employed against many of his other legal and political foes.
He has regularly fired rhetorical salvos against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is leading a separate, state-level criminal prosecution against Trump in connection with hush money payments made before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump in April pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in that case. Ahead of that court appearance in Manhattan, Trump targeted the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, accusing him and his family of being “Trump haters.“
Smith is overseeing a separate probe of the facts surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the post-presidential transfer of power in 2020. No charges have yet been filed stemming from that investigation, which is ongoing.
A day after former President Donald Trump’s historic arraignment on federal charges, Attorney General Merrick Garland defended his appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing both the classified documents probe, and the investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 general election. Robert Costa has more.
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Washington — The indictment of former President Donald Trump by a federal grand jury in Florida includes the most detailed look yet into special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into allegations that Trump mishandled classified documents and obstructed the probe itself.
The 44-page document, unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida last week, outlines the types of highly sensitive documents Trump allegedly had at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, and includes key pieces of evidence gleaned from aides’ communications and notes from Trump’s own lawyer.
The former president is charged with 37 felony counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of classified documents and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Trump has not been found guilty of any crime and has repeatedly asserted he has done nothing wrong. He is set to appear for an arraignment in federal court in Florida on Tuesday, where he is expected to plead not guilty.
Here are the top takeaways from the grand jury’s indictment:
Trump faces 37 federal felony counts
The charges Trump faces under the indictment include:
31 counts of willful retention of classified documents
1 count of conspiracy to obstruct justice
1 count of withholding a document or record
1 count of corruptly concealing a document or record
1 count of concealing a document in a federal investigation
1 count of scheme to conceal
and 1 count of making false statements and representations.
Trump kept “hundreds” of classified documents after leaving office
While he was president, Trump collected hundreds of letters, notes, photos, memorabilia and documents in bankers’ boxes that he kept at the White House. The indictment alleges that “hundreds” of classified documents were mixed in with other material, and that Trump arranged for “scores” of the boxes to be moved to Mar-a-Lago as he was preparing to leave office.
According to the indictment, the documents included information about:
U.S. nuclear programs
Defense and weapons capabilities of the U.S. and other countries
Vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its allies to attack
How the U.S. would retaliate in response to an attack
The documents included material prepared by the CIA, NSA, the Pentagon, the Energy Department and other intelligence agencies.
Once he left office in January 2021, Trump was not authorized to have access to these documents and they were not kept in the type of secure facility meant to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, the indictment notes.
The documents at the center of the 31 charges of retaining classified information range from top secret to secret, the two highest classification levels for national security information.
Trump showed sensitive documents to others at least twice
The indictment alleges that Trump showed sensitive documents to others on at least two occasions at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The indictment says he had some of the boxes moved to the club where he spends his summers in May 2021.
That July, Trump was speaking to a writer, a publisher and two staffers in a conversation that was being recorded. The indictment says he showed them a “‘plan of attack’ that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official.”
The former president, according to the indictment, “told the individuals that the plan was ‘highly confidential’ and ‘secret.’ TRUMP also said, ‘as president I could have declassified it,’ and, ‘Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.’” CBS News has previously reported that Trump was referencing Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and included remarks related to Iran and how to confront it militarily.
Several weeks later, Trump showed a member of his political action committee “a classified map related to a military operation” and told the person “that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close,” according to the indictment.
None of the people involved in either conversation held security clearances that would allow them to view classified material, the indictment notes.
The boxes were stored in a ballroom, a bathroom, storage room and Trump’s residence
Waltine “Walt” Nauta, Trump’s former personal aide, is charged as a co-conspirator for allegedly helping Trump obstruct the probe and for lying to federal investigators.
The indictment outlines Nauta’s alleged involvement in moving the boxes to different rooms throughout Mar-a-Lago, reconstructing their path using text messages from two Trump employees — referred to as “Trump Employee 1” and “Trump Employee 2” — and Nauta himself.
When Trump left the White House, some of the boxes were first stored in a ballroom before being moved to the “business center” and then a bathroom:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records being stored on the stage in the White and Gold Ballroom at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Justice Department via AP
Stacks of boxes can be observed in a bathroom and shower at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Justice Department via Getty Images
In May 2021, Trump allegedly ordered them moved into a cleared-out storage room that was “near the liquor supply closet, linen room, lock shop, and various other rooms” and could be “reached from multiple outside entrances.” The indictment includes a photo showing more than 80 boxes in the storage room once they were moved in June:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records that had been stored in the Lake Room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after they were moved to a storage room on June 24, 2021.
Justice Department via AP
Nauta and another aide would later move some of the boxes to and from Trump’s residence at the club.
Nauta found several boxes spilled onto the floor
In December 2021, Nauta texted Trump Employee 2 with two photos showing several boxes that had seemingly been knocked over, their contents spilling out onto the floor of the storage room. At least one document on the floor was marked secret:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records on Dec. 7, 2021, in a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, that had fallen over with contents spilling onto the floor.
Justice Department via AP
Trump Employee 2 replied, “Oh no oh no.” The indictment doesn’t indicate how or why the boxes had been spilled.
Under pressure from the National Archives, Trump allegedly personally reviewed some boxes
The National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, is the federal agency responsible for collecting and preserving presidential records. By the end of 2021, NARA officials had been demanding for months that Trump hand over records he had kept after leaving the White House.
Between November 2021 and January 2022, text messages included in the indictment indicate Nauta and Trump Employee 2 brought several boxes to Trump’s residence on the Mar-a-Lago property for him to review. In one instance, Trump Employee 2 printed out a photo of dozens of boxes stacked in the storage room and taped it on one of the boxes delivered to Trump’s residence so he could see how they were being kept:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records in a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, that were photographed on Nov. 12, 2021.
Justice Department via AP
In December, a Trump representative who had been in contact with NARA pushed Trump Employee 2 to provide a tally of how many boxes Trump had so he could inform Archives officials. “12 [i]s his number,” the aide replied, according to the indictment.
On Jan. 13, Nauta texted that Trump was still “tracking” the boxes and said there would be “more to follow today on whether he wants to go through more today or tomorrow.” Four days later, Nauta and Trump Employee 2 loaded 15 boxes into Nauta’s car and then a truck to deliver them to NARA.
A NARA review determined that 14 of the 15 boxes contained documents with classified markings. The FBI would later determine that the boxes included 197 documents with classified markings ranging from confidential to top secret.
On Feb. 9, 2022, NARA referred the matter to the Justice Department. The FBI opened a criminal investigation in March, and a federal grand jury convened in April.
Trump and Nauta allegedly hid documents from a Trump attorney looking for them
The grand jury issued a subpoena on May 11, 2022, demanding all documents with classified markings in the possession of Trump or his office. On May 23, Trump met with two attorneys — known as Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 in the indictment — to discuss how he would respond.
Details in the indictment and a subsequent court battle make clear that Trump Attorney 1 is Evan Corcoran, an experienced criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. The section of the indictment detailing Trump’s response to the subpoena relies heavily on Corcoran’s contemporaneous notes and subsequent testimony.
Attorney M. Evan Corcoran arrives at federal court in Washington on July 22, 2022.
Jose Luis Magana / AP
The notes provide some of the clearest indications of Trump’s state of mind as he apparently tried to avoid having to hand over the boxes. The indictment lays out how Trump responded, according to Corcoran, when the attorneys said they would need to look through the boxes to respond to the subpoena:
I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes.
Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?
Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?
Well look isn’t it better if there are no documents?
Eventually, Trump agreed that Corcoran would return to Mar-a-Lago on June 2 to search for the boxes, and he said he would delay his plans to travel to Bedminster in order to be there.
Between May 23 and June 2, the indictment says Nauta moved a total of 64 boxes from the storage room to Trump’s residence “at TRUMP’s direction.” Nauta brought 30 boxes back to the storage room on June 2 before Corcoran arrived to conduct his search.
Nauta escorted Corcoran to the storage room, where the attorney spent nearly three hours looking for documents with classified markings. The attorney found 38 such documents and placed them in a folder that he wrapped with clear duct tape. After his search, he met with Trump, who, according to Corcoran, asked, “Did you find anything? … Is it bad? Good?”
Corcoran arranged for an FBI agent to meet him at Mar-a-Lago the next day to take the folder. He also asked a third attorney not involved in the search to sign a certification stating that all documents responsive to the subpoena had been located and handed over after a “diligent search” of “the boxes that were moved from the White House to Florida.”
The indictment states: “These statements were false because, among other reasons, TRUMP had directed NAUTA to move boxes before Trump Attorney 1’s June 2 review, so that many boxes were not searched and many documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena could not be found — and in fact were not found — by Trump Attorney 1.”
The FBI found 102 documents with classified markings in its August 2022 search
A woman talks to Palm Beach police officer in front of former President Donald Trump’s house at Mar-A-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida.
Eva Marie Uzcategui / Getty Images
Federal agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, to find any remaining documents with classified markings, a dramatic development that thrust the case into the public eye.
The FBI found a total of 102 documents with classified markings. Twenty-seven were found in Trump’s office and 75 were found in the storage room. Seventeen were top secret, a designation reserved for information that would cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security” if exposed.
The 31 charges Trump faces for retaining documents all concern documents seized in the FBI’s search or those handed over by Corcoran in response to the May 23 subpoena. Trump is not charged with retaining any of the documents he voluntarily handed over to NARA earlier in 2022.
Nauta allegedly lied to investigators about what he knew
Walt Nauta, an aide to former President Donald Trump, follows Trump as they board his airplane at Palm Beach International Airport on Monday, March 13, 2023.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Nauta, the former Trump aide, is charged with five counts alongside Trump as a co-defendant. The 38th count in the indictment targets him specifically, accusing him of lying to federal agents who questioned him on May 26, 2022.
The indictment says he told investigators he was not aware of any boxes being moved to Trump’s residence, and said he first became aware of them when he was asked to help move them into a truck to hand over to NARA.
Asked if he “could help us understand, like, where they were kept, how they were kept, were they secured, were they locked,” Nauta allegedly replied, “I wish, I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I don’t — I honestly just don’t know.”
Corcoran’s testimony is central to the case
Earlier this year, Corcoran refused to discuss his interactions with Trump before a grand jury in Washington, D.C., citing attorney-client privilege.
But that privilege comes with what’s known as the “crime-fraud exception,” which says it does not apply if a client uses a lawyer’s services to commit a crime. In sealed proceedings in March, a federal judge ruled in favor of the special counsel’s office and ordered Corcoran to testify before the grand jury and provide evidence to federal investigators.
Now Trump’s attorneys could seek to have his testimony excluded from the Florida case on the same attorney-client privilege grounds that a judge in Washington rejected.
Melissa Quinn and Robert Costa contributed to this report.
You’ve seen them for days now, but when you look again, the images are still stunning: boxes and boxes of documents scattered about Donald Trump’s home – stacked in the bathroom, in the ballroom, and spilling out on the floor.
They’re also evidence in this past week’s sweeping indictment of the former president.
Stacks of boxes can be observed in a bathroom and shower at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Some documents were so sensitive to national security that, in the indictment, even their classification codes were partially redacted.
Department of Justice via Getty Images
Special counsel Jack Smith’s 37-count indictment alleged the boxes contained sensitive and classified documents, knowingly and willfully retained by Trump.
On Friday Smith stated, “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone. … Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced.”
We’ve never seen this before: a former president accused of conspiring to obstruct an investigation, and even violating the Espionage Act, with possible prison time listed at the end of the 49-page indictment.
Trump, as ever, was defiant last night. Appearing in North Carolina, he said, “You’re watching Joe Biden try to jail his leading political opponent. Think of it: this is like third-world country stuff.”
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley sees the moment as historic. “It’s just breathtaking. The fact of the matter is that Trump knew that he had secret documents, and was flashing them around willy-nilly to people.”
But will Americans care about it in the same way they did another scandal 50 years ago this summer?
Costa asked, “During Watergate, the whole country seemed transfixed to the hearings on Capitol Hill. But we now live in a busier age, where people live their lives on social media. Do you believe what’s happening now with this indictment will actually stick in the American consciousness?”
“There just been so many traumas with Donald Trump,” Brinkley replied. “This is not CBS, NBC and ABC of old, where everybody must watch the Watergate hearings. We are divided. People are choosing the kind of news or misinformation they want. And so, it seems to me that we’ve been in a kind of neo-civil war between what might be called the Federal establishment and the insurrection of Trump.”
In the end, President Nixon, of course, resigned. But Trump is running to retake the White House. And while at least one of his Republican opponents, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, has called for him to quit the race because of the indictment, many other Republicans are rallying around him.
Trump’s leading rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, compared Trump’s case to that of Hillary Clinton and her email server. “Is there a different standard for a Democrat secretary of state versus a former Republican president?” he asked.
Back then, the FBI investigated Clinton but concluded, according to FBI director James Comey, that there was insufficient evidence to establish that Clinton knew she was sending classified information.
If a federal indictment doesn’t pull Republicans away from Trump, what would? Stuart Stevens, a veteran presidential campaign strategist who worked for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012 and has since become a Trump critic, said, “Good question. I don’t think much. I think Trump will be the nominee.”
Costa asked, “Will it be possible for any Trump rival to get political oxygen in the coming months?”
“I think the way you would get political oxygen is to attack Donald Trump,” Stevens said. “This race is about Donald Trump. You’re not going to succeed by trying to be a pale imitation of Donald Trump.”
Wasting no time after the indictment was unsealed, Trump was posting pleas for donations on his “Truth Social” website.
After being charged under the Espionage Act, the former president turned to social media to ask for money.
CBS News
According to Stevens, “Donald Trump is going to raise a lot of money out of being indicted. You know, he may lose some of his high-end Super PAC donors who don’t want to be associated with the guy who’s under multiple indictments in multiple states! But his small donor fundraising is going to go crazy.”
President Biden has remained largely silent on the indictment, and on Trump, who has been on the road, and on the golf course.
Trump is set to appear before a federal judge in Miami on Tuesday.
Costa asked Brinkley, “What does this all mean for America?”
“The good news right now is that our system is working,” Brinkley replied, “that nobody is above the law, that Donald Trump, once he lost the power of the White House, is simply an American citizen, and he has to face the justice system the way every tax-paying citizen does.”
Former President Donald Trump greets supporters at a Team Trump volunteer leadership training event held at the Grimes Community Complex on June 01, 2023 in Grimes, Iowa.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump has been informed he is a target of the federal criminal probe into his retention of hundreds of classified government records after leaving the White House, NBC News reported Wednesday evening.
Such notification typically occurs before prosecutors decide whether to lodge criminal charges against a target.
Trump’s attorneys were told at a meeting Monday at the Department of Justice with special counsel Jack Smith and other DOJ officials that he is a target of the classified documents investigation, according to two sources briefed on the meeting, NBC reported. It was not clear if they previously had been notified of that status for him.
Targets are people who prosecutors believe committed a crime. Targets often end up being indicted.
DOJ regulations say that a prosecutor, “in appropriate cases, is encouraged to notify such person a reasonable time before seeking an indictment in order to afford him or her an opportunity to testify before the grand jury.”
A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment.
Disclosure of Trump’s status in the investigation came as Taylor Budowich, a top aide of his, testified to a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Miami, which has been gathering evidence for the case.
Smith is probing Trump both for keeping classified records at his residence in his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, and his suspected efforts to hide those documents and keep them from government officials seeking their return. By law, presidents must surrender government records when they leave office.
A raid on Mar-a-Lago last August by the FBI uncovered hundreds of classified documents and other government records.
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Trump in a social media post on Wednesday said, “no one has told me I’m being indicted.”
He added that he should not be criminally charged in the case “because I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Trump did not directly answer a New York Times reporter, Maggie Haberman, when she asked him if he had been told he was a target, she reported.
Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was indicted by a New York state grand jury in March on charges of falsifying business records in connection with a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels by his then-personal lawyer.
He has pleaded not guilty in that case, which is due to go to trial next year in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Smith separately is overseeing a criminal probe of Trump’s efforts to reverse his loss in the 2020 national presidential election. A state prosecutor in Georgia likewise is investigating him and his allies for such efforts in that state’s presidential election that year.
Trump on Wednesday called the prosecutors in all of those cases “fascists” who were trying to harm him politically.
Jack Smith, the special counsel announced by Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday to oversee the criminal investigations into the retention of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and parts of the January 6, 2021, insurrection, is a long-time prosecutor who has overseen a variety of high-profile cases during a career that spans decades.
Smith’s experience ranges from prosecuting a sitting US senator to bringing cases against gang members who were ultimately convicted of murdering New York City police officers. In recent years, Smith has prosecuted war crimes at The Hague. His career in multiple parts of the Justice Department, as well as in international courts, has allowed him to keep a relatively low-profile in the oftentimes brassy legal industry.
His experience and resume will allow him, at least at first, to fly underneath the type of political blowback that quickly met former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. It also shows he is adept at managing complex criminal cases related to both public corruption and national security – and that he has practice making challenging decisions with political implications.
Smith is widely expected to be tasked with making policy decisions around whether to charge a former president of the United States. Garland’s statements on Friday and the recent steps taken in the Mar-a-Lago and January 6 investigations have signaled that, at the very least, Donald Trump is under investigation and could potentially be charged with a crime.
“He knows how to do high-profile cases. He’s independent. He will not be influenced by anybody,” said Greg Andres, a former member of Mueller’s team.
Andres, who has known Smith since the late 1990s when they started at a US attorney’s office together and ultimately became co-chiefs of the office’s criminal division, said it’s the breadth of Smith’s experience that will enable him to withstand the public scrutiny and make tough judgment calls.
“He will evaluate the evidence and understand what type of case should be charged or not. He has the type of experience to make those judgments,” said Andres.
“He understands the courtroom. He understands how to try a case. He knows how to prove a case,” he added. “Particularly in these circumstances it will be critical to understand what types of evidence is required to prove the case in court.”
In a statement following his announcement, Smith pledged to conduct the investigations “independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice.”
“The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate,” Smith said.
One former colleague highlighted that Smith has prosecuted members of both parties.
“He’s going to be really aggressive,” the person said, adding that “things are going to speed up.” Smith, they said, “operates very quickly” and has a unique ability to quickly determine the things that are important to a case and doesn’t waste time “hand-wringing over things that are real sideshows.”
In court, Smith comes off as very down-to-earth and relatable, this person said, characterizing that as a good attribute to have as a prosecutor.
Smith also will not care about the politics surrounding the case, they said, adding he has very thick skin and will “do what he’s going to do.”
Smith began his career as an assistant district attorney with the New York County District Attorney’s Office in 1994. He worked in the Eastern District of New York in 1999 as an assistant US attorney, where he prosecuted cases including civil rights violations and police officers murdered by gangs, according to the Justice Department.
As a prosecutor in Brooklyn, New York, one of Smith’s biggest and most high-profile cases was prosecuting gang member Ronell Wilson for the murder of two New York City police department detectives during an undercover gun operation in Staten Island.
Wilson was convicted and sentenced to death, the first death penalty case in New York at the time in 50 years, though a judge later found he was ineligible for the death penalty.
Moe Fodeman, who worked with Smith at EDNY, called him “one of the best trial lawyers I have ever seen.”
“He is a phenomenal investigator; he leaves no stone unturned. He drills down to get to the true facts,” Fodeman said.
Fodeman, who is still friends with Smith, said he is a “literally insane” cyclist and triathlete.
Beginning in 2008, Smith worked for the International Criminal Court and oversaw war crimes investigations under the Office of the Prosecutor for two years.
In 2010, he became chief of the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department, where he oversaw litigation of public corruption cases. Lanny Breuer, the former assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Criminal Division who recruited Smith, said his onetime employee was “a terrific prosecutor” with a “real sense of fairness.”
“If you are going to have a special counsel, in my view, and you want someone who is going to be fearless, but fair, and not going to be intimidated and not overly bureaucratic, that’s Jack – he is all of these things,” Breuer told CNN.
“Smith brings cases quickly. … He doesn’t sit on cases. He is a person of action,” Breuer added.
After his stint at the Public Integrity Section, Smith was appointed first assistant US attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee in 2015.
Though he is not widely known in Washington, DC, legal circles, Smith is described as a consummate public servant.
About a decade ago, he hired waves of line prosecutors into the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department, supervising dozens over his years in charge there.
Brian Kidd, whom Smith hired at the unit, recalled how his boss walked him through every step of a complicated racketeering case against corrupt police officers.
“He was not going to tolerate a politically motivated prosecution,” Kidd said. “And he has an incredible ability to motivate the people working with him and under him. He’s incredibly supportive of his team.”
Smith handled some of the most high-profile political corruption cases in recent memory – to mixed outcomes.
He was the head of the public integrity unit when then-Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell was indicted in 2014, and was in meetings with the defense team and involved in decision-making leading up to the charges, according to a person familiar with the case.
McDonnell was initially convicted of receiving gifts for political favors, but then his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court.
Smith was also at the helm of the unit when the DOJ failed to convict at trial former Senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards.
A Republican source familiar with Smith’s oversight of the investigation into former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay commended Smith’s non-biased approach, saying that he ultimately made a “just” decision to conclude the investigation without alleging DeLay committed any crime.
In recent years while working at The Hague, he has not lived in the United States. He’s no longer on the US Triathlon team but is still a competitive biker.
Smith took over as acting US Attorney when David Rivera departed in early 2017 before leaving the Justice Department later that year and becoming vice president of litigation for the Hospital Corporation of America. In 2018, he became chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, where he investigated war crimes in Kosovo.
“Throughout his career, Jack Smith has built a reputation as an impartial and determined prosecutor, who leads teams with energy and focus to follow the facts wherever they lead,” Garland said during the announcement on Friday. “Mr. Smith is the right choice to complete these matters in an even-handed and urgent manner.”
In May 2014, the House Oversight Committee interviewed Smith behind closed doors as part of the Republican-led investigation into the alleged IRS targeting of conservative groups. Then-Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa launched the probe following a 2013 inspector general report that found delays in the processing of applications by certain conservative groups and requesting information from them that was later deemed unnecessary.
Republicans sought testimony from Smith, who at the time was Public Integrity section chief, due to his involvement with arranging a 2010 meeting between Justice Department officials and then-IRS official Lois Lerner, the official at the center of the IRS scandal. The meeting had been convened to discuss the “evolving legal landscape” of campaign finance law following the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, according to a May 2014 letter written by Issa and Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who is expected to be House Judiciary chairman next year.
“It is apparent that the Department’s leadership, including Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith, was closely involved in engaging with the IRS in wake of Citizens United and political pressure from prominent Democrats to address perceived problems with the decision,” Issa and Jordan wrote in the letter seeking Smith’s testimony.
Smith testified that his office “had a dialogue” with the FBI about opening investigations related to politically active non-profits following the meeting with Lerner, but did not ultimately do so, according to a copy of his interview obtained by CNN.
Smith explained that he had asked for the meeting with the IRS because he wanted to learn more about the legal landscape of political non-profits following the Citizens United decision because he was relatively new to the public integrity section. He said that Lerner explained it would be difficult if not impossible to bring a case on the abuse of tax-exempt status.
Smith repeated at several points in the interview that the Justice Department did not pursue any investigations due to politics.
“I want to be clear – it would be more about looking at the issue, looking at whether it made sense to open investigations,” he said. “If we did, you know, how would you go about doing this? Is there predication, a basis to open an investigation? Things like that. I can’t say as I sit here now specifically, you know, the back-and-forth of that discussion. I can just tell you that – because I know one of your concerns is that organizations were targeted. And I can tell you that we, Public Integrity, did not open any investigations as a result of those discussions and that we certainly, as you know, have not brought any cases as a result of that.”
Smith also testified that he was not aware of anyone at the Justice Department placing pressure on the IRS – and that he was never pressured to investigate any political groups.
“No. And maybe I can stop you guys. I know there’s a series of these questions. I’ve never been asked these things, and anybody who knows me would never even consider asking me to do such a thing,” Smith said.
This story has been updated with additional details.
