Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to helm the Biden Justice Department’s investigations of former President Donald Trump, has a mixed track record handling investigations into major political figures.
Smith was the chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in the nation’s capital from 2010 until early 2015, leading a team of 30 prosecutors in conducting public corruption cases throughout the United States.
During his years as chief, Smith’s unit garnered a successful conviction against former Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA), which was later unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court, and pursued a case against Democratic vice presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), which resulted in a hung jury and a mistrial. Smith’s team also secured a conviction against Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) before he was pardoned by Trump in 2021 and laid the groundwork for what would become the unsuccessful prosecution of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ).
“Today, I signed an order appointing Jack Smith to serve as special counsel,” Garland announced during his Friday press conference. “The order authorizes him to continue the ongoing investigations into” the Capitol riot and the Mar-a-Lago saga, the attorney general said, “and to prosecute any federal crimes that may arise from those investigations.”
Garland added: “Mr. Smith is the right choice to complete these matters in an even-handed and urgent manner.”
The Justice Department announced that Smith had resigned from his most recent role as chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, where he had been tasked with investigating war crimes in Kosovo.
Before that, Smith served as first assistant U.S. attorney and acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee from early 2015 to the summer of 2017.
“I intend to conduct the assigned investigation and any prosecutions that may result from them independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice,” Smith promised Friday. “I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate.”
Smith has a mixed success record of going after high-profile politicians.
Bob McDonnell
Smith’s DOJ biography in 2015 touted that while chief of the Public Integrity Section, Smith helped with the prosecution against McDonnell, who was indicted and convicted on federal corruption charges related to bribery in 2014. The case was being prosecuted by Smith’s deputy in the Public Integrity Section. McDonnell was investigated while governor, indicted shortly after leaving office in January 2014, convicted in September 2014, and sentenced to two years in prison in 2015.
The Supreme Court unanimously overturned McDonnell’s conviction in the summer of 2016.
McDonnell had been among the more popular Republican governors in the country, received a well-received reaction to his response to then-President Barack Obama’s State of the Union in January 2010, and was considered to be on the vice presidential short list for former governor and now-Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) when he was running against Obama in 2012.
The former governor and his wife, Maureen, were indicted in January 2014 on fraud and extortion charges related to their acceptance of $175,000 in loans and gifts from Virginia businessman Jonnie Williams while McDonnell was in office. Williams was the CEO of Star Scientific and hoped for assistance from the governor on getting Virginia’s public universities to perform research on a substance used in his company’s nutritional supplements.
The former Virginia governor appealed his conviction to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court then took up the case.
“The Government’s expansive interpretation of ‘official act’ would raise significant constitutional concerns,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “Conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents, contact other officials on their behalf, and include them in events all the time. Representative government assumes that public officials will hear from their constituents and act appropriately on their concerns. The Government’s position could cast a pall of potential prosecution over these relationships.”
Roberts added: “There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that. But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the Government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute. A more limited interpretation of the term ‘official act’ leaves ample room for prosecuting corruption, while comporting with the text of the statute and the precedent of this Court.”
The Obama Justice Department dropped the McDonnell case after the Supreme Court slapped it down. The legal defense reportedly cost the McDonnells over $27 million.
“There was never a quid pro quo or any conspiracy or any agreement to help Mr. Williams,” McDonnell said in 2017. “And ultimately, the Supreme Court of the United States said that government advanced essentially a dangerous legal theory that had serious constitutional problems.”
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John Edwards
Smith’s unit also pursued criminal charges against Edwards, a former senator, the vice presidential running mate for then-Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) when he was the Democratic Party’s unsuccessful nominee against President George W. Bush, and the second runner-up in the 2008 Democratic primaries, which Obama won over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Justice Department announced in June 2011 that a federal grand jury had handed down a six-count indictment against Edwards “for allegedly participating in a scheme to violate federal campaign finance laws.” Prosecutors said the Democrat was hit with one count of conspiracy to violate the federal campaign finance laws and to make false statements to the Federal Election Commission, four counts of receiving illegal campaign contributions in 2007 and 2008, and one count of concealing those illegal donations from the FEC.
The scheme was related to more than $900,000 going from backers of Edwards to Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker hired for his 2008 campaign and with whom he was having an extramarital affair. The money was allegedly used to help cover up the affair Edwards was having in 2008 as his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer.
The jury deadlocked in May 2012 after a five-week trial and more than a week of deliberations. Some officials inside the Justice Department reportedly had initial misgivings about the case before getting on board with the prosecution.
After the mistrial loss, Smith said at the time that “our job is to look at the facts and then look at the law and apply the facts to the law.” The Justice Department soon announced it wouldn’t attempt to retry Edwards.
Jurors said on TV after the trial that a majority didn’t think the DOJ had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt and that the evidence simply wasn’t there, while a minority wanted to convict Edwards.
Rick Renzi
Smith’s unit did successfully prosecute Renzi, who was convicted in 2013 for extortion, bribery, insurance fraud, money laundering, and racketeering. The DOJ said the evidence at trial showed the congressman “promised in 2005 to use his legislative influence to profit from a federal land exchange that involved property” owned by real estate investor James Sandlin. Renzi was convicted on 17 counts and sentenced to 36 months in prison in 2013.
Trump pardoned Renzi on his final full day in office, before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, with the former congressman saying he had been “wrongly convicted by a Department of Justice that engaged in witness tampering, illegal wiretapping, and gross prosecutorial misconduct.”
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Bob Menendez
Smith also helped lead the investigation into Menendez, although he left his post just a few months before the Justice Department announced in April 2015 that it had indicted Menendez and Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen in New Jersey “in connection with a bribery scheme in which Menendez allegedly accepted gifts from Melgen in exchange for using the power of his Senate office to benefit Melgen’s financial and personal interests.”
“According to allegations in the indictment, between January 2006 and January 2013, Menendez accepted close to $1 million worth of lavish gifts and campaign contributions from Melgen in exchange for using the power of his Senate office to influence the outcome of ongoing contractual and Medicare billing disputes worth tens of millions of dollars to Melgen and to support the visa applications of several of Melgen’s girlfriends,” the Justice Department said at the time.
Menendez pleaded not guilty, proclaimed his innocence, and said he and Melgen were just longtime friends.
Following an 11-week trial, the federal judge overseeing the case declared a mistrial in November 2017 after the 12-person jury said it was deadlocked on the charges. One of the jurors told reporters that the jury was split 10-2 on all of the counts, with the large majority voting to acquit the senator.
“The way this case started was wrong, the way it was investigated was wrong, the way it was prosecuted was wrong, and the way it was tried was wrong as well,” Menendez said outside the courtroom at the time.
The Justice Department initially said in mid-January 2018 that it would seek a new trial, declaring that “the conduct alleged in the indictment is serious and warrants retrial.”
But a few days later, U.S. District Judge William Walls acquitted Menendez on seven of the counts that had been brought against him. The Justice Department gave up its efforts to retry the senator and dismissed the indictment that month.
A bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee report blasted Menendez in April 2018.
