DOJ Vet Jack Smith Recounts Prosecuting Trump for First Time

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0:51Limited time offer. Visit a Serta retailer today. Perfect sleeper. Perfect sleep. Night after night. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melbert. And we begin with the single only person in American history and the world who's ever indicted a president. The man you might recall who brought two criminal indictments against then defendant Trump. I am talking about someone we almost never hear from before, during and after those cases. Former DOJ special counsel, Jack Smith, the only federal prosecutor to indict a president. He just doesn't speak much. You might recall that if you remember those busy periods during his two cases over the past years.

1:35But he has now, the News Tonight, made this rare public appearance. And it's with someone you might recognize, a fellow Justice Department veteran, Andrew Weissman, who also we should note is an MSNBC analyst. So this is big news, full disclosure, someone we work with. But when this hit, I don't care who he happened to be talking to. It was going to be a big deal because it was his first comments since all of this happened. and the person he once prosecuted as a federal defendant, Donald Trump, has become president again. Smith, who speaks in a very businesslike and dry way, you can prepare for that because I'm going to show you this, he is not jumping around and being dramatic.

2:15He's not speaking in soundbites, to be sure. And yet, in a way, he was still quite candid about what was his long, secret, discreet work as a special counsel, prosecuting a former president who was also a candidate. and he discusses, based on the evidence and facts, he says, what is wrong with the Trump-Bondi DOJ today.

2:36Andrew Ross Sorkin:Once we get in a position where we start talking about maybe not following court opinions we don't like, we are lost. The attacks on public servants, it has a cost for our country that is incalculable. The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case or who got chosen is ludicrous. Everybody who worked on my team was fired. Eight political people who wanted to do the right thing and do public service. They brought somebody in who had never been a criminal prosecutor. That just reeks of lack of process. Process shouldn't be a political issue. People have to think about what matters to them.

3:09Andrew Ross Sorkin:And if they believe in things like the rule of law, take that commitment and find another way to be part of the solution. That's just some of what he says there. Smith first rose to prominence in 2022, when because of his credentials, he's prosecuted war criminals, prominent people in the public corruption unit, another case that was tinged with political questions because he went after a then top Democrat, former Democratic running mate John Edwards. Based on that background, he brought that to this approach and he overseed those DOJ probes that resulted, as I mentioned, in the first federal indictment of a president.

3:44He dealt with the obstruction alleged, the hiding of classified documents, and of course, then-Defendant Trump's recent history involved in January 6th. Appointing Jack Smith to serve as special counsel. Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to investigate former President Donald Trump.

4:05Andrew Ross Sorkin:He's become the first former president ever to face federal charges. Charges are related to Trump's mishandling of documents. Charging Donald J. Trump. with conspiring to defraud the United States. Four counts related to alleged actions he took to stay in power after the 2020 election. Former President Trump is angry about Jack Smith. He believes that the Justice Department is aligned against him. Federal officials launched this weekend an investigation into Jack Smith. That is some of how we got there. During that period, as mentioned, Smith did not do interviews. Legally, he could, but he never did.

4:44not with journalists or television but not with lawyers or other settings he was quiet and only spoke if you will or communicated through those filings and after he left and during what we've lived through this first term we have excuse me this first year of the second term we haven't heard from smith much so now there's plenty to discuss both the case history which there are legal ways he can discuss the parts that are not classified or secret grand jury and a president who is taking square aim at his perceived opponents through DOJ powers. The Judiciary Committee is now calling on Smith to go under oath with a line of attack, saying that now that he's essentially popped up, they still view this as a partisan and politically motivated history in those indictments.

5:30But he is sounding alarm bells, and we're going to play more from this newsworthy interview. We have the person who conducted it, Andrew Weissman, and just spoke and sat down with Jack Smith for that first extended newsworthy conversation. And as mentioned, former FBI general counsel, former Mueller prosecutor, I say it in the way of disclosure, as you did yourself in the very interesting discussion, Andrew, that you guys have a career history at DOJ, but you elicited what we would call very legally substantive newsworthy information. I have some more of the excerpts, but anything you want to say now off top to help us understand what you learned?

6:08Sure. You know, there's the substance of what he had to say. But I think that for people watching this, I would encourage them to sort of sit down and listen to the whole thing. Because in many ways, what's more important than the substance is I think you get a sense of the man and the person. he came across to me as extremely heartfelt and sincere i think he's clearly been through a lot as and i but he mostly when asked that sort of personal question spoke about his team and what his team has been through and so i really think one really useful thing for him speaking is for people to get to know him as opposed to the caricature of him And that's why I hope he continues to speak out for that for that reason.

7:06Really striking, because he, James Comey, others are facing these type of attacks that sometimes combine what looks like a break with rules and process to legally harass or even indict them. And then, as you mentioned, a kind of a public cartoonish attack that may affect how Americans understand what this was. Let's play another newsworthy part where you asked him to discuss and he went into what he knows a lot about, how the DOJ works, what the rules require and what that tells us about that new unusual indictment of former FBI Director Comey.

7:41Andrew Ross Sorkin:This latest prosecution of the former director of the FBI, you know, there's a process to secure an indictment. There's a process of of predication, having some evidence before you do that. Here, and again, I only know what I see myself in the media, but the career prosecutors, the apolitical prosecutors who analyzed this said there wasn't a case. And so they brought somebody in who had never been a criminal prosecutor on day's notice to secure an indictment a day before the statute of limitations ended. That just reeks of lack of process. I think a lot of Americans do not see this as a political issue.

8:20Andrew Ross Sorkin:Process shouldn't be a political issue, right? Like if there's rules in the department about how to bring a case, follow those rules. You can't say, I want this outcome. Let me throw the rules out. That's why, frankly, you see all these conflicts between the career apolitical prosecutors I worked with, because they're being asked to do things that they think are wrong. And because they're not political people, they're not going to do them. And I think that explains why you've seen the resignations, you've seen people leave the department. It's not because they're enemies of one administration or the next.

8:51Andrew Ross Sorkin:They've worked through decades for different administrations. It's just they've been doing things apolitically forever. And when they're told, no, you've got to get this outcome no matter what, that is so contrary to how we were all raised as prosecutors. I think that's been the center of all the conflict. He identifies the civic tradition there. And in the interview, he also mentioned that we have a comparison. If you go back far enough, we had what he refers to as the patronage system, where relationships and ultimately corruption trumped expertise. And he talks about why that's a problem in prosecutions or national security, why that hurts us.

9:32Absolutely. That was sort of a running theme that he hit over and over again, that there is an apolitical process. And he really tried to not criticize the current administration, but rather to point out the obvious contrast between what is supposed to happen in an apolitical Department of Justice, regardless of party. And you can obviously then see what is happening now and contrast and compare those two. I thought that was quite striking. One of the things he did point out that I thought was some news was in pointing out that he followed all of those internal processes when he was special counsel.

10:18And the sort of tempest in the teapot du jour, which is the people on Congress complaining about whether Jack Smith was spying on them, was something that was not true. and that all of the processes that were necessary just to get sort of limited telephone records was A, disclosed in the report that he issued, a very, very lengthy report, but also was something that had to be approved all the way up the chain within the Department of Justice. This is something that there was a process that he followed. And so that was a real theme that you just don't do things willy-nilly. You don't do things because you like someone or dislike somebody that there's a process to follow.

11:06And that's what career people and professionals do. Yeah, it's it's the rule of law. It's hung over this Trump era. And it's the difference between organized societies and ultimately oppression and bedlam. I mean, that's that's you can take it back hundreds of years, which is why sometimes this does feel weighty. We've again gone through. Here's another interesting part where he, upon your questioning, discusses the impact, the personal toll in these cases. Yeah. What have the consequences been in terms of just the personal lives of either yourself or your team in terms of how they have to live, whether they can find jobs?

11:46You know, what is it like to have to live through that kind of harassment for what seemingly is just doing your job?

11:56Andrew Ross Sorkin:Everybody who worked on my team was fired, not just the lawyers, but the administrative staff as well. I think these are people who have spent their careers sacrificing for the communities they want to protect for our country. I'm really upset that people like that not only are being vilified, but that it's hard to get their stories out of who they are. These are people, lawyers aside, these are people who put their lives on the line. And for them to be fired for stuff like this, I just don't see how anyone can hear those stories and not be moved by it. Andrew? So there was a moment where Jackson's voice actually cracked when he told the story about an FBI agent on his team who was fired.

12:44And people may recall that senior FBI leadership have said that they pleaded with Kash Patel to not fire him at this moment because his wife was dying of cancer at the time. and nevertheless Kash Patel fired him and actually ended up firing the people who had tried to have Kash Patel not fire him this moment so sort of a clean sweep and when Jack was telling that story you know it's understandably was you know was quite emotional about it yeah I don't have much to add to that I mean There you go. He also spoke about the strength of the case that ultimately didn't go to trial, the January 6th case against then defendant Trump.

13:36Let's look at this brand new.

13:39Andrew Ross Sorkin:We felt we had a strong case and that those charges that we brought would allow us to present all the relevant evidence to a jury, that we would be able to present everything that mattered to a jury. And while I understand that reasonable people could think we should charge incitement or insurrection, insurrection in particular, very little case law interpreting that, certainly not to the extent that the other statutes that we brought. Incitement understand the reaction, and I could see where people could find this to be incitement. But at the same time, as you know, that's a very high standard under the First Amendment analysis.

14:14Andrew Ross Sorkin:And frankly, I did not think that those were fights that we needed to take on, given the charges that we were able to otherwise bring. Smith discussing that whole piece, he prosecuted Trump for Jan 6th. There were other schemes. There were schemes that related to paperwork, if you want to call it that, to what happened in Congress, to Pence, to the fraudulent electors. We've charted all this, and Andrew remembers this, as some of our viewers might. This is for history. We don't know, Andrew. That's the thing about living through it, whether we might be in an aberration and the rule of law will hold and people will look back at these moments, this exchange here, other things Smith says, as understanding the history, or whether we may not have nonpartisan administration of justice in the future.

15:03I don't think it's dramatic to speak to that challenge because that's the stakes. What did you make of his legal assessment of the case? And I'll tell you what I did, I noticed that he, if he was going to land on a side, he seemed to be landing on the most careful side. And lawyers can debate that. You've been criticized, even though we love your analysis, I'm not above mentioning the history, you've been criticized by some, including Trump officials, as being too aggressive in cases in Mueller and also previously in cases you dealt with Enron and others. People say, oh, he was too aggressive.

15:40Without asking you to compare yourself to him, and they're different facts. He seemed to be very laser focused on being careful and by the book, he also told you why he did Florida jurisdiction because he thought that was the most careful way to do it. There were arguments for other places where you might avoid that judge. And he went with the careful side, but your reaction, sir? I had the exact same reaction. You know, I asked him sort of like, why did you pick Florida? You know, obviously there was a lot of second guessing about that. And he said, because that's where everything happened. So that's where he brought it.

16:14He didn't play games. And so, you know, very candid about that. I asked him the questions that many people had as sort of why he charged the insurrection case the way he did. and exactly what you said, which is that the things that are more problematic that could be challenged where he may have won, but it's like he was saying, look, I don't need that fight. I can bring core charges that are straight down the center of the lane and I don't have to get bogged down with this sort of arcane fights and more questionable issues because I've got a strong case right down the center of the lane. And again, I thought that was why it was so important that you could both hear what he was saying substantively, but also hear how he was saying it and start to get a measure of the man.

17:08I actually asked him about that, that he sort of followed what I call the Robert Mueller school of not speaking while he was special counsel, And that there was another model, which is Archibald Cox, to date myself, who was famously the prosecutor on the Watergate matters. And he gave a very famous press conference. And Jack was quite thoughtful about that, saying, you know, it may be time in this day and age for the Department of Justice to really rethink that. Obviously, you can't go out and speak about the guilt of somebody. We're seeing that now. We saw that with James Comey speaking about Hillary Clinton in a derogatory way.

17:51So no one was saying that, but there are ways to do it, which Archibald Cox followed. And he said, you know, given this media state that we're in, it may be time to have people speak out where they can. Yeah, all very important. It was a fascinating exchange. You said you urged people to take it in depth, and it is on YouTube. So folks can search Smith Weissman, find it that way. As I'm out of time and this is serious, my only lighthearted question for you, Andrew, is now that you've landed one of the biggest legal interviews in the country that one could get, who's your next big scoop? What's the next big interview?

18:31We want you to be the new Oprah. Yeah, you know, as you know, you know very well, I'm a nerd. So, you know, I'm writing a law review article. I'm writing a book. It's like, you know, this was, I usually don't do things like this, but I thought it was important to do. And I'm really glad that Jack did it and got himself out there so people could see and judge him. No, you landed it. He is. It's a big one. And look, if this is going to be your thing, we'll have you on. We'll show the clips. You get John Durham or Chief Justice Roberts, whoever you get, we'll show some clips because it was a doozy.

19:07Andrew Weissman, thank you. Let me tell folks what's coming up tonight. We have a special guest, Andrew Ross Sorkin, on the day his book comes out about why another 1929 crash could be a risk we're facing. It would obviously complicate Donald Trump's agenda right now. But next up, another newsworthy interview, Senator Booker's here. We return in 90 seconds.

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20:41We are back with Senator Cory Booker, Democrat from New Jersey, a member of the Judiciary Committee, front and center on some of the issues we just discussed. And plenty to get into, Senator, but I have one more brand new excerpt from Jack Smith's remarks. Judiciary, of course, oversaw that and other DOJ activities. Take a look.

21:00Andrew Ross Sorkin:this idea that if you didn't vote for the current person in office, you can't be trusted to be a government employee. In the United States, we tried that. And we know that it's rife with corruption and it's rife with incompetence. And so that makes me very concerned going forward. If you are driven to achieve certain outcomes, no matter what, that's a real problem. Your response on all of the above there. Look, we're in a dangerous moment, and I think you sort of said it earlier. The challenge you have, this is not just the partisan warfare of the typical politics of America. This is an attack on a fundamental aspect of who we are as a people, that we have independent systems that are beyond politics, and our justice system is one of them.

21:49for Donald Trump to do what he's doing right now is not just wrong in the attack on the rule of law. It actually threatens the very rule of law when you start to politicize it and have a whole scale exodus from the Justice Department of people who are Republicans, people who have been in Democratic and Republican administrations. When they are seeing what's going on and are leaving or being fired, it really begins to show a cancer in our democracy that can grow. You cannot just do this and think it's going to just snap back into place when Donald Trump is gone. It is a threat to the erosion of our democracy, and we should take it with that level of severity.

22:29And it overlaps with how we understand public officials. No one's immune. We've covered people in both parties when the evidence leads to a nonpartisan indictment. That's the system working. But Donald Trump literally calling for these indictments and then seeing them drop like dominoes is not that. We've got the list. We've seen it's happening. People said, oh, what will we do if we get to that point? We're past that point. The top law enforcement official in New York, Attorney General James, who had done a civil enforcement action over Trump's business, which never even brought into the question of jail, was just a business regulation, clearly, apparently targeted for doing her job.

23:10She spoke out about this at the first public appearance last night. Take a look. I will not bow. I will not break. I will not bend. I will not capitulate. I will not give in. I will not give up.

23:27Andrew Ross Sorkin:You come for me, you gotta come to all of us.

23:35Strong remarks. Our political choice may be to almost embrace or lean into it. Sometimes Democrats are criticized for running away from things, downplaying everything. You have a colleague in the House now who's been indicted, McIver. We've got your other colleague in the Senate, Schiff. It's not that long ago, Senator Booker, that it would have sounded far-fetched that sitting senators would be facing this kind of thing. Is it out of the question that they could go after Schiff? What are you guys doing to address this? Well, I think Jace Baldwin said it best when Angela Davis was unjustly incarcerated.