🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Donald Trump has continued to attack federal prosecutor Jack Smith after he was appointed special counsel to oversee two criminal probes into the former president.
Over the past two days, Trump has written several Truth Social posts claiming that Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing Smith is proof that the Department of Justice is "corrupt" and "weaponized" against the former president.
Smith, a former chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, will oversee the DOJ's criminal investigations involving the classified materials recovered from Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, as well as some aspects of the inquiry into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump and other conservative figures have suggested that Smith may be biased in his role as special counsel while noting his Democrat links, including how his wife Katy Chevigny worked as a producer on the Michelle Obama documentary Becoming and twice donated to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
Trump, in particular, has suggested Smith may be compromised as special counsel while pushing a series of other allegations and misleading statements.
"This fully weaponized monster, Jack Smith, shouldn't be let anywhere near the political persecution of 'President Donald J. Trump' I did nothing wrong on January 6th, and nothing wrong with the Democrats' fix on the Document Hoax, that is, unless the six previous Presidents did something wrong," Trump posted Monday on Truth Social.
While presidential materials were removed from the White House at the end of the Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations, they were maintained and owned by the National Archives and Records Administration.
The documents were also stored in temporary NARA facilities and none were top secret materials like what was recovered from Trump's Florida home.
"Also when will you invade Bill and Hillary's [Clinton] home in search of the 33,000 emails she deleted AFTER receiving a subpoena from the U.S. Congress? When will you invade the other Presidents' homes in search of documents, which are voluminous, which they took with them, but not nearly so openly and transparently as I did?" Trump wrote.
In an earlier post, Trump asked how he can "get a fair shake" from Smith while sharing a social media comment detailing how Chevigny donated money to Biden's campaign.
"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 [former Russia inquiry prosecutor] Andrew Weissmann. Weaponization. Our Country is in big trouble, a real mess!" Trump added.
Trump also called Smith a "political hit man" and accused the DOJ of being "corrupt" in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
"Jack Smith (nice, soft name, isn't it?), is a political hit man, who is totally compromised, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near our already highly WEAPONIZED & CORRUPT 'Justice' Department and FBI, which are stuffed with, and listening to, Radical Left 'MONSTERS,' who will cause difficulties for our Country the likes of which we have not seen before," Trump said.
Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner previously dismissed Trump's suggestions that Smith would not be able to fairly lead the criminal investigations after the former president shared screenshots showing that Chevigny worked on Becoming, and tweeted "thank goodness" when Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election.
"Trump alleges that if the prosecutor's spouse is a Democrat, well then the prosecutor cannot go after, cannot investigate, cannot indict corrupt or criminal Republican politicians because of the prosecutor's spouse's politics. That's absurd," Kirschner said.
In a statement following his appointment to special counsel, Smith said he will "exercise independent judgment and will move both the criminal investigations forward "expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate."
Newsweek reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more