Could Special Counsel Jack Smith, having failed to convict President Trump, soon glide through the revolving door between government work and lucrative private practice? 

Mr. Smith’s plans for work have not yet come into focus, but signs are emerging that he does not intend to disappear from the public sphere. This week, he signed a letter, alongside some 900 other federal prosecutors, that expressed criticism of the Department of Justice’s direction under Attorney General Bondi, who has worked to purge the agency of those involved in Mr. Smith’s prosecutions. 

Mr. Smith’s endorsement of the view that the DOJ’s values “have been tested by recent actions of the Department’s leadership” comes days after Politico obtained a disclosure that during his tenure as special counsel his office received $140,000 in pro bono legal services from the law firm of Covington & Burling.

Mr. Smith’s use of Covington & Burlington’s services was likely authorized under an Office of Government Ethics regulation that allows for the engagement of private firms if  “Legal expenses covered … are those for a matter arising in connection with the employee’s past or current official position.” The law firm did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment. 

Covington has long been a haven for Democratic legal rainmakers at the District of Columbia. Attorney General Holder, who served under President Obama, is a senior counsel at the firm, which by some counts has more lawyers in the metro D.C. area than any other. The firm’s vice chairman, Lanny Breuer, in 2010 recruited Mr. Smith to lead the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section. 

After Mr. Smith was named special counsel by Attorney General Garland, Mr. Breuer told The New York Times that “Jack is not political at all. He is straight down the middle.” Another partner at Covington, Alan Vinegard, supervised Mr. Smith when he was a prosecutor at the Eastern District of New York. 

Mr. Vinegar assigned Mr. Smith to the prosecution of a police officer, Charles Schwarz, for his role in the assault on Abner Luima. The Times reports that during closing arguments Mr. Smith pointed at Schwarz and in front of the jury and Judge Rena Raggi declared, “That man right there ‘participated in the sodomy of another man with a broomstick while he was a New York police officer.’” 

Schwarz — whose degree of responsibility for the attack on Mr. Louima was a contentious subject — was convicted, though that verdict was overturned on appeal. He  eventually agreed to a plea deal in which he was sentenced to five years in prison on a single count of perjury. 

Mr. Smith’s resume suggests that he could be an asset to any firm’s litigation group. In addition to his turn at the Eastern District of New York and the Public Integrity Section, he prosecuted cases as an acting United States attorney in Tennessee. Some of his antagonists in court included Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senator Edwards, and Governor McDonnell. 

His record on these high-profile prosecutions was mixed — Mr. Edwards’s ended in a mistrial and Mr. McDonnell was vindicated by a unanimous Supreme Court. The trajectory of Silver’s case was a convoluted one. He was convicted on corruption charges, which were overturned on appeal. He was found guilty after a retrial, but then three of those verdicts were thrown out by the Second United States Appeals Circuit. 

Mr. McDonell’s victory at the Supreme Court was a major blow to aggressive prosecutors like Mr. Smith, as it raised the bar significantly for what constitutes criminal public corruption. Ms. Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, cited that case as precedent for the DOJ’s decision to dismiss its bribery charges against Mayor Adams.   

Another chapter of Mr. Smith’s career could render him appealing to firms whose work is of an international nature. He worked in the office of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court at the Hague and then, in a separate stint, served as the chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, prosecuting war crimes from the Kosovo war. That’s where he was when Mr. Garland picked him to prosecute Mr. Trump. 

That background attained constitutional salience when Judge Aileen Cannon in south Florida ruled that Mr. Smith was unlawfully appointed because he was not confirmed by the Senate and, she determined, could point to no enabling statute for his position. That holding is still law, at least in her district.

Any firm that employs Mr. Smith, though, would have to contend with Mr. Trump’s animosity toward the prosecutor, whom he has repeatedly called “deranged” and a “maniac,” among other other insults. Mr. Smith resigned before Mr. Trump was sworn to a second term. Before departing, though, the special counsel wrote in his final report that he would have won a conviction of  the 47th president “but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency.”  

The 47th president’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, has created a “Weaponization Working Group” whose remit includes probing “Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff, who spent more than $50 million targeting President Trump, and the prosecutors and law enforcement personnel who participated in the unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home.”

Should Mr. Smith be too politically radioactive for law firms to take on, he could possibly repair back to the Hague, or perhaps gain a perch at a law school. There could also — possibly — be an opening for a special counsel at Manhattan, where Judge Dale Ho could decide that an independent prosecutor is the path forward for the troubled prosecution of Mr. Adams.