Who is Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought 2 Trump indictments?

United States Special Counsel Jack Smith is having the summer of a lifetime. In June, he indicted Donald Trump on four criminal counts in connection with the trove of documents improperly stored at the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort. Then, in August, he dropped another bevy of federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S., in regard to Trump's alleged attempts to overturn his loss in the last presidential election.

The historic development marks the first time a former president has been hit with one federal indictment, let alone two, and Smith, with his reputation as an "aggressive prosecutor known for trying high-stakes, politically explosive cases," per The Wall Street Journal, appears up for the challenge. "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," he said in a statement when first appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland last year. "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 is fearless"

Smith, 54, was born in June 1969 and grew up in a suburb of Syracuse, New York. After graduating from the State University of New York at Oneonta in 1991, he earned his Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School and later began working as a prosecutor in the Manhattan DA's office. In 1999, he switched to a similar role at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, where he was involved in the prosecution of Ronnell Wilson, a gang leader who murdered two undercover NYPD officers, as well as that of Charles Schwarz, one of multiple former city officers implicated in an assault case against a jailed Black inmate.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In 2008, he moved to The Hague, Netherlands, to work at the International Criminal Court before coming back to the Justice Department to lead its Public Integrity Section from 2010 and 2015. At the DOJ, he oversaw "high-profile cases that often targeted elected officials" like Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who was investigated for "alleged campaign finance violations aimed at hiding an extramarital affair," per ABC News; the case was later dropped. By 2018, Smith had returned to The Hague, before Garland tapped him to serve as special counsel in the investigations against the former president.

Greg Andres, one of Smith's former colleagues, described the veteran prosecutor as "independent, thoughtful" and "deliberate," Andres told ABC News. "He's going to do what's right and he has a tremendous amount of experience." Not only that, but "he is fearless," added attorney Mark Lesko, who worked with Smith at the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, per Reuters. "If the case is prosecutable, he will do it." Others have characterized him as the "consummate prosecutor and public servant," said former federal prosecutor James McGovern, who is "not interested in prosecuting somebody for the point of prosecuting," added ex-DOJ colleague Brian Kidd. "If it moves to that next level, it's because the facts are there and he believes a crime was committed."

It would seem Smith views himself and his industry with similar regard. "If I were the sort of person who could be cowed," he said back in 2010, "I would find another line of work."

The Trump indictments

Smith will "exercise independent prosecutorial judgment to decide whether charges should be brought," Garland said when announcing the special counsel's appointment last November, a decision he reportedly made on account of Smith's trademark autonomy and work ethic.

Despite the high-profile nature of both Trump investigations, Smith has "cut an elusive figure since his appointment" and "kept a profile so low" that a "recent sighting of him emerging from a Subway with lunch was news in the Justice Department headquarters across town," The New York Times wrote in June. Even at a "high-stakes meeting" with Trump's lawyers that month, Smith was said to have sat back and allowed his underlings to take charge. The former president, meanwhile, has (unsurprisingly) grabbed the mic, attacking Smith as "deranged" and alleging that the investigation is intended to hurt his chances of winning the Republican nomination in 2024, The Wall Street Journal noted.

"Deranged Jack Smith is going before his number one draft pick, the Judge of his "dreams" (WHO MUST BE RECUSED!), in an attempt to take away my FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS," the former president wrote on Truth Social on Monday, referring to both Smith and Tanya Chutkan, the judge assigned to oversee proceedings in the election case. "This, despite the fact that he, the DOJ, and his many Thug prosecutors, are illegally leaking, everything and anything, to the Fake News Media!!!"