A grand jury indicted Donald Trump on Tuesday over his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The 45-page indictment against Trump – which includes one count of conspiracy to defraud the US, one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights – was filed by special counsel Jack Smith in federal district court in Washington DC.
Smith, a 54-year-old veteran prosecutor appointed as special counsel by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, in November 2022, has now brought two indictments against Trump, the first one surrounding Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents that were discovered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Following his appointment by Garland last November, Smith vowed to conduct the criminal investigations as thoroughly as possible.
“I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice,” Smith said in a statement.
“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,” he added.
Before his appointment as special counsel in the Trump investigations, Smith was the specialist prosecutor at The Hague’s Kosovo specialist chambers where he investigated war crimes from 1998 to 2000 during Kosovo’s war for independence from Serbia.
Smith, a registered independent and graduate of Harvard law school, began his three-decade career as a prosecutor in 1994 at the Manhattan district attorney’s office – the same office which filed a 34-count indictment against Trump in April surrounding hush-money payments during the 2016 presidential election.
Five years later, Smith began working as an assistant attorney at the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of New York. Up until 2008, Smith supervised approximately 100 criminal prosecutors who handled cases involving terrorism, civil rights violations and financial fraud.
From 2010 to 2015, Smith headed the justice department’s public integrity section which was established following the Watergate scandal and oversees the investigation and prosecution of federal crimes affecting government integrity such as bribery of public officials and election crimes.
In an interview with the New York Times in 2010, Smith said, “If I were the sort of person who could be cowed … I would find another line of work.”
In 2015, Smith went on to serve as the first assistant US attorney for the middle district of Tennessee before taking over as acting US attorney two years later in 2017. In 2018, Smith was appointed specialist prosecutor at the Kosovo specialist chambers.
On Tuesday, Smith condemned the January 6 riots, saying, “The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government, the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
He then vowed to “seek a speedy trial” following Trump’s third indictment, saying, “My office will seek a speedy trial so that our evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens. In the meantime, I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”
