Former President Donald Trump condemned “Trump Hater Jack Smith” on Monday, accusing the newly appointed special counsel of being a “hit man” for former President Barack Obama.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last week that Smith, who had been working in The Hague until a week ago, would head up the Department of Justice’s investigations into the Capitol riot and the Mar-a-Lago classified documents saga and would “prosecute any federal crimes that may arise from those investigations.”
On Monday, Trump took to Truth Social to voice his displeasure.
Highlighting a post from a Gab user who alleged members of Smith’s family were anti-Trump, the former president declared: “And I’m supposed to get a fair shake from this person, who’s under tremendous pressure from his family, but he is actually worse than they are? Can Republicans, and fair-minded people, generally, allow this to happen? Jack Smith is nothing less than a hit man for Obama, his Attorney General Eric Holder, and Andrew Weissmann. Weaponization. Our Country is in big trouble, a real mess!”
Smith served under Holder as head of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Unit from 2010 to 2015. Weissmann, also an Obama DOJ veteran, went on to be a top prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and has praised Garland’s selection of Smith.
As head of the DOJ unit, Smith led a team of 30 prosecutors in conducting public corruption cases throughout the United States, including a mixed track record of going after high-profile politicians.
SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH INVOLVED IN LOIS LERNER IRS SCANDAL
Over the weekend, Trump shared a Washington Examiner article detailing Smith’s connection to the Lois Lerner IRS scandal targeting conservative nonprofit groups during the Obama years. Smith was instrumental in DOJ’s public integrity unit inserting itself into the saga.
Lerner, director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Unit, led an IRS effort targeting tea party groups and similar conservative tax-exempt organizations, and Smith’s push for DOJ officials to contact Lerner and the IRS in order to get the DOJ involved seemed to be the impetus behind the IRS sending the FBI reams of nonprofit tax records.
Smith insisted in testimony in 2014 that “we had a dialogue with the FBI” but that his DOJ unit “never opened any investigations.” An IRS watchdog and the DOJ later admitted the IRS committed wrongdoing, although not of the criminal variety. Lerner would eventually apologize while claiming she hadn’t been driven by politics.
“This sounds fair, doesn’t it? The ‘Justice’ Department is CORRUPT,” Trump said when sharing the story on Smith and the IRS.
Republicans led by Trump have been renewing their calls for Garland to appoint a special counsel into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter following his move to appoint one to investigate the former president.
The DOJ’s Hunter Biden investigation has been dogged by whistleblower allegations that the investigation is being stymied and by allegations of conflicts of interest.
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Garland explicitly said he moved to appoint a Trump special counsel in part because Trump announced he is running again in 2024, and Joe Biden has at least indicated he is too.
