"Deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal," President Donald Trump said during a press conference in the Oval Office on Wednesday. The sentiment was not new: Everyone knows that Trump has a grudge against Smith, the former special counsel who obtained two federal indictments against him, which Trump described as "the worst weaponization" of the justice system "in the history of the world." But the fact that the president offered his assessment of Smith alongside three top federal law enforcement officials—Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel—made it seem more like marching orders than his usual airing of grievances.
Bondi, Blanche, and Patel are all Trump loyalists who previously worked for him personally. Bondi served on Trump's defense team during his first impeachment. Blanche represented him during his 2024 criminal trial in New York. Patel—the author of children's books detailing the travails of the wise and just "King Donald," who is able to triumph over his evil enemies with the help of "a wizard called Kash the Distinguished Discoverer"—served as a campaign surrogate and a go-between during the dispute over the presidential records that Trump took when he left the White House in January 2021. But in their current positions, Bondi, Blanche, and Patel are supposed to be working for the American people, and before their Senate confirmations all three promised to pursue justice rather than revenge.
