Q: Who is Jack Smith?

Jack Smith , 54, is a longtime federal prosecutor and seasoned investigator. He is a former career Justice Department prosecutor who has also headed the department’s Public Integrity Section. To take the job as special counsel, Smith resigned as chief prosecutor for a special court in The Hague, in the Netherlands, which was investigating war crimes in Kosovo . He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Oneonta and Harvard Law School. He has received the U.S. Department of Justice Director’s Award, as well as the U.S. Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.

Question 1

Who is Jack Smith?

Accepted Answer

Jack Smith, 54, is a longtime federal prosecutor and seasoned investigator. He is a former career Justice Department prosecutor who has also headed the department’s Public Integrity Section. To take the job as special counsel, Smith resigned as chief prosecutor for a special court in The Hague, in the Netherlands, which was investigating war crimes in Kosovo. He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Oneonta and Harvard Law School. He has received the U.S. Department of Justice Director’s Award, as well as the U.S. Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.

Question 2

When was Jack Smith appointed special counsel?

Accepted Answer

Smith was appointed special counsel by Garland on Nov. 18 to take charge of the Mar-a-Lago documents case after Trump announced he was running for president the same month. Garland said then that Trump’s candidacy, along with Biden’s likely reelection bid, necessitated another layer of independence for the investigations involving Trump, as the attorney general aimed to insulate the probe from any perception of political influence. Appointing a special counsel was “in the public interest,” Garland said at the time, given the “particularly sensitive matters” and “extraordinary circumstances” involved. He added: “Mr. Smith is the right choice to complete these matters in an evenhanded and urgent manner.” As special counsel, Smith still briefs top Justice Department officials on his investigation, but he works far more independently than a Justice Department prosecutor would. And if Garland were to overrule a decision by Smith, he would have to issue a written report explaining his actions.

Question 3

What did Garland appoint Jack Smith to investigate?

Accepted Answer

Along with this investigation into classified documents, Smith and his team are also investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and whether he is criminally culpable for aspects of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. When appointed by Garland, Smith promised to conduct the investigations and any possible prosecutions “independently.” “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 said at the time.

Question 4

What other cases has Jack Smith worked on?

Accepted Answer

Smith started as a prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he earned a reputation as a hard worker. He spent nearly a decade in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, where he served for a time as the head of criminal litigation. In that position, Smith oversaw about 100 prosecutors working on cases in areas such as terrorism, violent crime and gangs, along with white-collar crimes. He left in 2008 to become a war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, then returned to the Justice Department in 2010, taking over the Public Integrity Section. In that role, he supervised the litigation of complex public corruption cases across the country. “If I were the sort of person who could be cowed … I would find another line of work,” he once told the New York Times. Smith’s former colleagues at the Justice Department have generally praised him as a dedicated prosecutor who never flinched from tough cases. He was also previously head of litigation for the Hospital Corporation of America, one of the largest health-care providers in the United States. Before that, from 2015 to 2017, he served as first assistant U.S. attorney and acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. In 2018, he returned to The Hague to investigate war crimes committed in Kosovo. During his three years in that role, Smith sent two men to prison for sharing sensitive information taken from his office and indicted Kosovo’s president on war crimes charges. Those charges upended a peace summit that Trump, then president, was organizing at the White House in June 2020.

Question 5

What else to know about Jack Smith?

Accepted Answer

Smith is known to enjoy biking and has completed more than 100 triathlons and at least nine Ironman competitions around the world — including in Germany, Brazil and Canada — despite saying in a 2018 interview that he “could not swim a length of a pool until my mid-thirties.” He is married to an award-winning documentary filmmaker, Katy Chevigny, and they have a daughter, Josie. He has described “enthusiasm and high energy” as key ingredients to a happy life. “Like most people, I think, I want to devote my energies to making the world and my community a better place for my daughter to grow up in.”

Question 6

What will happen next?

Accepted Answer

Trump is expected to appear, in person or virtually, in federal court in Washington on Thursday. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, a 2014 Obama appointee and a former D.C. public defender. If Trump enters a guilty plea, he moves to sentencing. But if he continues to deny the charges and enters a not-guilty plea, the case would move to a trial, which could take months to start. His growing legal troubles do not bar him from running for president. No one else is charged alongside Trump, but the indictment describes six unnamed co-conspirators, who appear to be in significant legal jeopardy. Smith said the investigation was ongoing. Amber Phillips, Nick Mourtoupalas, Kelsey Ables, Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu, Perry Stein, Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline Alemany contributed to this report.

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