Jack Smith Claims Trump’s Justice Department Is ‘Not Normal,’ Calls for Investigation of Minneapolis ICE Shootings

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s declaration at Harvard Law School that “what we are seeing today” at the Trump administration’s Department of Justice “is not normal” is yet another taunt directed at the president he twice sought — unsuccessfully — to convict.Those remarks, made in February but only recently uploaded to YouTube and not widely reported, came during what the famously liberal law school calls an “afternoon discussion” last month between Mr. Smith, who graduated from the school in 1994, and Professor Alex Whiting, who worked under Mr. Smith in the special counsel’s office. Messrs. Smith and Whiting also served together at the Kosovo Special Prosecutor’s Office and the International Criminal Court. Mr. Whiting is a professor of practice, meaning he was hired because of his clinical skills rather than academic resume.Mr. Smith contended in respect of the DOJ that “I see traditions of the department being set aside because particular outcomes are wanted. I see people being targeted because of their opposition to the president or because he perceives them as an enemy. And I also see cases not being investigated, not looked at, because of a fear where an investigation would take them.” Mr. Smith, whom the school calls a “leading practitioner,” insisted that “Facts matter” and “a good prosecutor goes where the facts take them.” In February he testified before Congress that he had amassed proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Mr. Trump was involved in a “criminal scheme”related to January 6. Mr. Smith wrote in his final report that he would have won a conviction of Mr. Trump “but for” the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.The special counsel accused the current iteration of the DOJ for a “reticence to follow the facts because it will involve prosecuting or investigating somebody they know the president doesn’t want them to prosecute or investigate.” Mr. Smith mentioned the killing of two ICE protesters in Minnesota as a possible subject of investigation, explaining that “if you shut the door to facts, you shut the door to the rule of law. You shut the door to getting outcomes in the public interest.”Mr. Smith, who joked that he was the “last guy who got in” to his class at HLS, has emerged as a defiant defender of his tenure atop two of the highest profile cases in American history — the January 6 one and the prosecution of Mr. Trump for the retention of secret documents at Mar-a-Lago. His full side of the story on that second case is obscured by Judge Aileen Cannon’s order blocking the release of Mr. Smith’s final report on that case. At a London appearance in October alongside the former prosecutor and now paid MS NOW contributor Andrew Weissman, a fierce opponent of Mr. Trump, Mr. Smith declared that the “idea that politics played a role in who worked on” his prosecutions, “or who got chosen, is ludicrous.” He also ventured that “Nothing like what we see now has ever gone on” with respect to the DOJ. Mr. Trump has long called for Mr. Smith to be prosecuted and argues that he “destroyed many lives under the guise of legitimacy.”Mr. Smith has come in for escalating criticism from Republicans as the full scale of his investigation into January 6 comes to light. Code named “Operation Arctic Frost,” the probe ultimately ended up charging only Mr. Trump but involved the surveillance of 14 Republican lawmakers, including eight senators. Internal DOJ emails disclose that Mr. Smith’s office was aware that such actions against sitting lawmakers could amount to violations of the Constitution’s Speech or Debate protection.At Harvard Mr. Smith lamented that “There is an advisor to the current attorney general who, on Jan. 6, 2021, was at the Capitol telling fellow rioters to kill police officers… I think that says a lot about where we are … people like that are being elevated.” His reference was to the hiring, as a senior adviser at the DOJ, one Jared Wise. The Biden Justice Department charged Mr. Wise with multiple felonies after he was caught on police body camera on January 6 outside the Capitol, calling police officers at the Capitol “Nazi” and “Gestapo” and shouting “kill em.” Mr. Wise, who never entered the Capitol, said he regretted using the language but that he was responding to seeing officers clubbing protesters on the head and was speaking rhetorically. Mr. Wise’s trial was underway in January 2025 when a newly inaugurated Mr. Trump pardoned the January 6 protesters. Mr. Wise resigned from the Justice Department earlier this month. His remit was to root out corruption that had led to what the Trump Administration views as improper weaponization of federal law enforcement. Mr. Wise conceded that he did not believe he could effect change from within.

Jack Smith Claims Trump’s Justice Department Is ‘Not Normal,’ Calls for Investigation of Minneapolis ICE Shootings

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