Jack Smith, the special counsel who twice indicted President Trump, accused the Justice Department of having been \u201ccorrupted\u201d by Trump loyalists he claimed were demolishing its credibility and seeking to undermine the rule of law.<\/p>\n
Mr. Smith\u2019s remarks, made last month in a private discussion at the Cosmos Club in Washington, represented his sharpest criticism of the department since leaving his post early last year. They came at a time when Mr. Trump is demanding Mr. Smith be prosecuted for his work as special counsel \u2014 an outcome Mr. Smith believes is likely, according to people familiar with his thinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a Department of Justice today that targets people for criminal prosecution simply because the president doesn\u2019t like them,\u201d Mr. Smith said in the hourlong discussion on April 20, according to a video obtained by The New York Times.<\/p>\n
Mr. Smith, speaking in the deliberate cadence of a prosecutor delivering a closing argument, cited what he cast as the wholesale erosion of the department\u2019s tradition of independence from the White House. \u201cWe have a department that fails to investigate cases because they might uncover facts that are inconvenient narratives the president would like to press,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a department that fails to move on cases because they might uncover facts that are inconvenient to narratives the president would like to press,\u201d added Mr. Smith, who was appointed in late 2022 to investigate Mr. Trump\u2019s post-presidency retention of government documents and his push to overturn the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
Asked to comment, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Emily Covington, said, \u201cI would expect nothing less from Jack Smith.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New York Times obtained a video of the event \u2014 an hourlong session in front of 300 people that included an opening speech and a brief question period \u2014 that was sent to club members and attendees.<\/p>\n
The video offers a rare glimpse of the typically tight-lipped prosecutor, who has confined his comments to congressional testimony and closed events in an effort to defend himself against attacks by the president and his allies.<\/p>\n
Mr. Smith told the audience, which included former Justice Department officials, that he remained optimistic that the institution could be recommitted to its nonpartisan mission, even though it had \u201cbeen corrupted over the last year\u201d by Trump appointees he said were more eager to impress their boss than follow laws, rules and norms.<\/p>\n
Mr. Smith said it had become \u201cdifficult to track\u201d the number of times federal judges had accused Justice Department officials of dishonesty or lack of candor since Mr. Trump returned to office.<\/p>\n
He expressed solidarity with department employees who had quit or been forced out during the Trump administration. Efforts to portray them as Democratic partisans, he suggested, were part of a larger push by Mr. Trump to undermine the criminal justice system for political gain.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo erode the rule of law in our country, you need to attack these people, and that is what we have seen since January of 2025,\u201d Mr. Smith said, adding, \u201cThis attack on public servants \u2014 it\u2019s not a byproduct of the attack on the rule of law. It is a central component of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He singled out for praise a handful of federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents in Minnesota, saying they did the right thing by refusing to investigate the family members of an unarmed woman killed in January by an immigration agent during a street protest.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi declined to investigate the agent for potential civil rights violations. Instead, Ms. Bondi and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, ordered federal law enforcement officials to find links between the victim and left-wing domestic terrorist groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were facts that they wanted to push down and have nobody see because they would interfere with a story that they wanted to tell,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve never been in a Department of Justice that would be willing to be complicit in something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed that Mr. Smith was motivated by personal and political animus, and have demanded his prosecution, even though they have never produced evidence that he did anything wrong.<\/p>\n