Growing Republican outrage over the Department of Justice’s search of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound could shine the spotlight on a hitherto shadowy figure — Special Counsel Jack Smith’s primary deputy, Jay Bratt. 

Mr. Bratt led the classified documents prosecution against Mr. Trump that would eventually be taken over by Mr. Smith. The Mar-a-Lago prosecution — which during the Biden Administration was often described by legal experts as the strongest of the four criminal indictments of Mr. Trump —  is now being reappraised and criticized by some as a negotiation on document retention that was criminalized by an overzealous prosecutor, Mr. Bratt. He and Mr. Smith stand by their prosecution of the case. 

Before the special counsel was appointed, Mr. Bratt served as a chief in the Department of Justice’s National Security Division. That prestigious post means that Mr. Bratt was in charge of prosecutions under the Espionage Act, the statute under which Mr. Trump and his two defendants were ultimately charged by Mr. Smith.

The surprise search of the Palm Beach mansion was executed in August of 2022, some three months before Mr. Trump declared his intention to retake the White House. Days after that announcement Attorney General Merrick Garland tasked Mr. Smith with leading the documents case against Mr. Trump as well as the one that centered on the events of January 6, 2021. 

The warrant authorizing the Mar-a-Lago search, in which  FBI agents penetrated the bedchamber of the first lady, Melania Trump, and also entered the private quarters of Mr. Trump’s then-teenage son, Barron, was granted by a magistrate judge in Florida, Bruce Reinhart. Judge Reinhart ruled that the government had met its burden of showing “probable cause” to secure the warrant. 

The Mar-a-Lago search appeared to have especially enraged Mr. Trump.. He called the search an “unannounced raid” and reckoned that “Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.” Mr. Trump accused the FBI officers of leaving the place “in shambles” and “making a mess.” 

An op-ed last week  in the Wall Street Journal by one of Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys, Jim Trusty, in the Mar-a-Lago case fleshes out Mr. Bratt’s central role in the documents probe. Mr. Trusty discloses that Mr. Bratt was in dialogue with Mr. Trump’s team about the documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, and that he issued grand jury subpoenas for “any and all” documents with classification markings at the Palm Beach mansion.

Mr. Trusty compares the imbroglio over the secret documents to a “dispute about an overdue library book” and denounces Mr. Bratt a “a hell-bent prosecutor who saw his chance for glory — a chance to prosecute a former president who was about to run again.” Mr. Bratt was deposed by House Republicans in May. He, unlike Mr. Smith, repeatedly refused to answer questions by invoking the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.

Earlier this month the DOJ and FBI declassified emails — right before Mr. Smith testified to lawmakers at a closed door session —  that disclosed that the FBI privately objected to the decision by Messrs. Garland and Bratt to pursue a full bore search of Mar-a-Lago. One FBI official asserted that agents had not “established probable cause for a search warrant for classified records at Mar-a-Lago.”

That same agent added that “if a primary goal of this investigation is to identify and recover classified records quickly, so as to protect the information, the 6 weeks spent fixated on probable cause for a search warrant have been counterproductive.” Another email recons that “the most expedient way to ensure recovery of all classified documents would be to go through” a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Evan Corcoran. 

Mr. Corcoran’s notes would eventually become key to Mr. Smith’s case for Mr. Trump’s guilt for not only violating the Espionage Act, but also for criminal obstruction. The full contours of the case built by Messrs. Smith and Bratt remain a mystery after Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that the special counsel was unlawfully appointed and dismissed the charges against all three defendants. She also locked under seal his final report on the case, which Mr. Trump, in his “personal capacity,” is pushing to permanently bury.

Mr. Bratt, like Mr. Smith, resigned days before Mr. Trump swore the oath of office for a second time. Some dozen prosecutors — and more support staff who worked under Mr. Smith were fired early in the 47th president’s second term. Mr. Bratt, after a 34 year tenure at the DOJ,  is now a lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he is slated to teach a course on criminal adjudication in the spring semester.

Mr. Smith earlier this month founded a new boutique law firm, staffed with alums of his special counsel’s office. Mr. Bratt was not among the partners at the new enterprise.