In a rare interview last week, Jack Smith tackled a wide array of topics ranging from international courts to the transparency of prosecutors and the presence of cameras in U.S. federal courts. He also addressed the core purpose of the special counsel role. Notably, Smith dismissed claims by President Donald Trump and his supporters that his investigations into the January 6 events and the Mar-a-Lago affair were politically motivated, labeling such assertions as “absolutely ludicrous.”

This discussion, titled “State of the United States,” was held between Smith and Andrew Weissmann, a former top aide to Robert Mueller, at the UCL Centre for Global Constitutional Democracy on October 8. The event was later made available on YouTube on Tuesday.

At around the 33-minute mark of the conversation, Weissmann steered the dialogue towards Smith’s investigation of Trump as special counsel.

Smith compared his role to that of the special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal, countering the idea that he acted independently without oversight in charging Trump. He explained, “A special counsel is typically appointed when there is either a conflict of interest or a unique situation requiring the attorney general to decide it’s in the public’s best interest to have an independent and objective investigation. The special counsel is then tasked to determine if legal action should be pursued.”

“I can’t just do what I want, I have to do it within the rules of the Department [of Justice],” Smith added, pointing out that he needed to get approval from the Public Integrity Section before pursuing election fraud charges.

Smith also offered a full-throated defense of the prosecutors on his team, most of whom were working on the investigations before he was appointed as special counsel.

“These are team players who don’t want anything but to do good in the world. They’re not interested in politics, and I get very concerned when I see how easy it is to demonize these people for political ends when these are the very sort of people, I think, we should be celebrating,” he said. “The people on my special counsel team were like that. The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case or who got chosen is ludicrous.”

“The idea that politics would play a role in big cases like this is absolutely ludicrous and it’s totally contrary to my experience as a prosecutor, from, again, the time I was a junior prosecutor,” Smith added.

Smith said his first boss would have “tossed [him] out a window” had he gone to him with political considerations about whether or not to bring a case.

As for the Mar-a-Lago case, Smith said “we had tons of evidence” that Trump willfully withheld classified documents and obstructed their return, unlike in special counsel Robert Hur’s probe of then-President Joe Biden.

“And the obstructive evidence, publicly saying these are my documents, or things like that, and I can keep them. The evidence to not give the documents back when the government even tried to get them back before there was a criminal investigation, those sort of things […] that helps prove willfulness,” Smith said, noting that there was much more “willfulness” evidence and about four times as many documents allegedly in Trump’s possession than there were in Biden’s possession.

Smith, famously appointed by Biden’s U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and role in Jan. 6, ran into a buzzsaw in Florida that saw his appointment invalidated by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, in July 2024.

After Trump was elected once again as president, the Jan. 6 case disappeared in much the same way, and mass pardons for his supporters followed.

Smith’s remarks come at a time when Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee seek his testimony about his “team’s partisan and politically motivated prosecutions of President Donald J. Trump and his co-defendants.”

Watch the full interview here: