by WorldTribune Staff, June 13, 2023

He was appointed by the Biden Department of Justice to investigate Joe Biden’s chief 2024 rival.

In recent years, he has been a chief prosecutor at the Hague in the Netherlands and opted to live abroad.

So, who exactly is Jack Smith?

“Very few people have ever heard of the man,” Jake Welch reported for The National Pulse on Monday, one day before Trump was arraigned at federal court in Miami.

Smith played an early role in the IRS targeting of conservative groups.

Smith, who served as chief of the DOJ’s public integrity section during the Obama administration, came to the attention of House Judiciary Committee Republicans investigating the IRS scandal in 2014, The Washington Times reported. Committee Republicans said Smith was a key link to the IRS early in the move to investigate the tax-exempt status of conservative nonprofit groups.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who was heading the Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, cited the testimony of Richard Pilger, Smith’s subordinate at the DOJ, who said Smith set up a meeting in October 2010 with IRS official Lois Lerner “to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits.”

“It is apparent that the department’s leadership, including Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith, was closely involved in engaging with the IRS in wake of Citizens United and political pressure from prominent Democrats to address perceived problems with the decision,” the GOP lawmakers wrote.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general eventually concluded that the IRS targeting of conservative nonprofits was inappropriate.

“The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention,” the report said.

Smith’s wife, Katy Chevigny, is a film director who produced Michelle Obama’s documentary “Becoming,” which also stars Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and Oprah Winfrey.

Chevigny is a supporter and donor to the Democrat Party and Joe Biden.

“She donated $1,000 to Biden for President and another $1,000 to the Biden Victory Fund in September 2020. She also made another seven small donations to ActBlue – the Democratic fundraising platform, and to the far-left MoveOn.org’s political action committee,” Welch noted.

Bell Chevigny, Smith’s late mother-in-law, was even a Senior Justice Fellow at George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and sat on the Board of the Human Rights Defense Center, which received donations from the New World Foundation, a liberal New York-based organization closely connected to Hillary Clinton, Welch added.

Trump on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to 37 charges related to alleged mishandling of classified documents. He requested a jury trial.

After his arraignment, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “ONE OF THE SADDEST DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE!!!”

In an earlier Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “Will Deranged Jack Smith be looking at the thousands of pages of documents that Biden had in Chinatown then, when caught, quickly sent up to Boston? What about the 1,850 Boxes that Biden is fighting to keep secret. How about Hillary’s 33,000 emails that she deleted and acid washed? Will he be looking at the $5,000,000 bribe that was paid to Biden but that the Justice Department is trying to hide? Much more coming on that! We are living in a Third World Country. No Borders, Rigged Elections! THE GRAND JURY WAS NEVER TOLD ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT OR THE CLINTON SOCKS CASE, BOTH EXONERATING!”

Although Smith has promised a “speedy trial,” law experts say that is not likely.

“In every case that I had involving classified information, we never had a speedy trial,” said Stephanie Siegmann, a former chief of the national security unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, who noted that the evidence-sharing process with Trump’s defense team known as discovery could potentially take a year.

“This case will be designated complex because it involves classified information,” added Siegmann, now a partner with the law firm Hinkley Allen.

In social media posts and in a campaign stop over the weekend, Trump said the DOJ is engaging in election interference to aid Biden. The former president also suggested there are two standards of justice in the U.S., saying that top-level Democrats committed crimes but were never charged.

“Will Deranged Jack Smith be looking at the thousands of pages of documents that Biden had in Chinatown then, when caught, quickly sent up to Boston?” Trump wrote on Tuesday. “What about the 1,850 Boxes that Biden is fighting to keep secret. How about Hillary’s 33,000 emails that she deleted and acid washed? Will he be looking at the $5,000,000 bribe that was paid to Biden but that the Justice Department is trying to hide? Much more coming on that! We are living in a Third World Country. No Borders, Rigged Elections!”

Meanwhile, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on Monday that she will stand against funding Smith’s office.

This morning, I’m writing an appropriations rider to DEFUND Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office and entire investigation.

I will not vote for ANY appropriations bill to fund the weaponization of government.

I hope every one of my Republican colleagues will join me.

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) June 12, 2023

GOP presidential Vivek Ramaswamy announced a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request against the DOJ and Garland in a bid to obtain communications connected to Trump’s indictment.

“My campaign just filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demand to uncover exactly what the White House communicated to Merrick Garland [and] Jack Smith about the unprecedented indictment of a former U.S. President & [Joe] Biden’s disfavored opponent in this election,” he tweeted. “Every American deserves to know.”

The businessman-turned-2024 candidate added that “if the captured media fails to do its job, real leaders in this country need to step up and do it instead, adding: I’m running to win this election & it’d be easier for me if Trump were eliminated from running, but that is not the right answer for our nation. America First Always.”

The request seeks to obtain access to “any records” belonging to the DOJ, including electronic communications between the DOJ and non-government third-parties. Under a federal statute, federal agencies are mandated to respond to a FOIA request within 20 business days.

Ramaswamy, who is trailing far behind Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also announced that if he is elected, he will pardon Trump if he’s convicted.

“Reading that indictment and looking at the selective omissions of both fact and law, I’m even more convinced that a pardon is the right answer here,” he said during a recent CNN interview, calling Trump’s indictment “deeply politicized.”

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