Former special counsel Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who led two federal investigations into President Donald Trump, is being investigated by the Office of Special Counsel.
Smith, who has long been targeted by Trump and allies for what they believe is weaponization of the justice system, is being investigated by the office for allegedly violating the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activity.
The Office of Special Counsel confirmed the inquiry into Smith to The Independent.
That comes after Senator Tom Cotton of Alabama, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, requested that an investigation be opened into Smith on allegations that he intended to interfere with the 2024 presidential election by trying to speed up proceedings in Trump’s election interference case.
“Jack Smith is a partisan Democrat who weaponized the law against President Trump to help Dems win,” Cotton wrote on X. “I’ve asked the Office of Special Counsel to investigate his actions that likely violated the law to influence the election.”
Smith is a registered independent voter.
The Office of Special Counsel is an independent federal agency that safeguards the government’s merit system by investigating allegations of wrongdoing and protects employees while whistleblowing. It is separate from the Justice Department office where Smith’s special counsel status came from.
The investigation into Smith is the latest move in the president’s campaign of retribution against those whom he believes unfairly targeted him for political reasons. Trump has used his power as president to open investigations into people, revoke security clearances, and target businesses and institutions.
In August 2023, Smith brought a four-count criminal indictment against Trump for his actions to overturn the 2020 election results in his favor. Smith had pushed for the trial to begin soon after the indictment was filed because the presidential election was coming up and Trump was running.
Cotton claims that Smith’s urgency is a sign that he was acting at the behest of Democrats to influence the election. No evidence has yet been brought forward to confirm Cotton’s theory.
Smith had investigated Trump for less than a year before bringing the indictment. He accused the president of pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud to try and convince the public that the election had been rigged in former president Joe Biden’s favor, despite no evidence of mass voter fraud.
Those claims incited Trump supporters who, at the direction of Trump, marched to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest Congress’s certification of election results. The mob turned angry and violent and physically stormed the Capitol that day, resulting in multiple deaths.
The indictment claimed Trump and his allies engaged in a scheme to try and appoint fake electors in states with close races to certify the election in Trump’s favor, even though he lost.
Trump had denied all wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the charges, constantly railing against the indictments and Smith as corrupt and motivated by politics.
Smith’s case against Trump began seeing cracks after the Supreme Court ruled in the president’s favor, awarding him vast immunity from criminal prosecutions in July 2024. Once Trump won the 2024 election in November, Smith moved to dismiss the case, saying there was a precedent not to prosecute a sitting president.
Smith stepped down from his position in the Justice Department in January, shortly before Trump took office. The president had threatened to fire Smith as soon as he assumed power.
