Donald Trump has been charged on 37 counts, including violating the Espionage Act and conspiring to obstruct the criminal investigation, in a decision by special prosecutor Jack Smith.
Smith, a veteran prosecutor and justice department official, has been at the center of two federal investigations into Trump’s misconduct – one concerning Trump’s interference with the certification of the 2020 election, and the other over the former president’s mishandling of classified documents found at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort.
Over a seven-month investigation, Smith and his team interviewed former White House officials, Trump aides and Mar-a-Lago staff in the classified documents investigation before handing down the decision on Thursday.
A registered independent, Smith was appointed by the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, in November 2022 to serve as special prosecutor overseeing the two investigations. The Department of Justice has yet to deliver a decision concerning Trump’s role in the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
After he was appointed, Smith, then the chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a court in The Hague, worked first from the Netherlands while he recovered from a cycling accident. Smith resigned from that role, where he investigated war crimes in Kosovo, to take up the special prosecutor post in the US.
A career prosecutor
Smith, whose career as a prosecutor spans three decades, spent more than a decade in New York, where he worked as an assistant US attorney from 1999 to 2008 after a stint as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Its current head, Alvin Bragg, filed in April a 34-count indictment against Trump for falsifying business records to conceal hush payments to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election cycle.
He was an assistant US attorney in Tennessee – and served for a short time as acting US attorney. From 2010 to 2015, Smith oversaw the justice department’s public integrity section, which was created following the Watergate scandal to oversee corruption and prosecute crimes by government officials.
Smith was appointed chief prosecutor of a special court in The Hague in 2018.
Garland’s announcement that he would appoint Jack Smith as special prosecutor overseeing the two federal criminal investigations came days after Trump announced he would again run for president.
Smith’s investigation revealed Trump acknowledged he kept classified documents
Earlier this week, Smith was seen meeting with justice department lawyers and members of Trump’s defense team, in a sign he would soon hand down a decision. Smith’s team then informed Trump’s lawyers in a letter that the ex-president was a target of the documents investigation, according to multiple reports.
Mark Meadows, formerly Trump’s chief of staff, testified before a Florida grand jury on Wednesday, in another sign the investigation was nearing its end.
Trump, however, had maintained he was unaware of the indictment.
“No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
But Smith’s investigation proves otherwise: among the evidence is an audio tape where Trump says he kept a classified document detailing a potential attack on Iran, CNN first reported.
Trump is currently the top contender for the Republican nomination in 2024.
This article was amended on 9 June 2023. Smith worked as chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a court in The Hague, not as “chief prosecutor at the international criminal court” as an earlier version said.