'Everything Smith Did as a Deranged Prosecutor Helped President Trump Win the Presidency'

John Lauro, the president's criminal defense attorney in the January 6 case, describes his experience with Special Counsel Jack Smith and his henchmen in response to Smith's recent publicity tour.

In the summer of 2023, John Lauro—a New York-based defense attorney at the time representing Donald Trump related to the events of January 6—met the government prosecutors leading the criminal investigation into his client. For nearly two hours that day, Lauro spoke to Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team in response to Smith’s target letter notifying the former president that he may face charges for his attempts to “overturn the 2020 election.”

Lauro and Todd Blanche, currently the deputy attorney general, tried to dissuade Smith from bringing yet another federal indictment against a former president and the leading GOP presidential candidate during an election. (Blanche at the time also represented Trump in the classified documents case brought by Smith in June 2023 in Florida.) “We went over all the reasons why a prosecution was not justified in terms of the First Amendment issue, the lack of merits, and most importantly on executive immunity and how important that was,” Lauro told me by phone on October 16. He further asked Smith “to consult with the solicitor general’s office and the office of legal counsel” before proceeding any further.

Smith did not speak or ask any questions during their meeting; the next day, on August 1, 2023, Smith indicted the president on four counts in the J6 matter.

In response to the special counsel’s recent attacks on the president and his DOJ, as I reported here, Lauro wants the public to know the Jack Smith he dealt with for more than a year in the J6 case in Washington, D.C. “I saw a gross deviation from Department of Justice norms and prosecutorial ethics by the entire Jack Smith team,” Lauro, a former federal prosecutor himself, said. “Every move he made as a prosecutor was not justified by prosecutorial ethics but was instead motivated by a single purpose—to get Donald Trump and prevent him from being president.”

The purpose of the lawfare, however, extended beyond the pursuit of Donald Trump; the wholesale destruction of the MAGA Right was their ultimate goal, Lauro said. “What we were fighting was an effort to take out a political movement and Jack Smith was the prosecutorial hitman to do that.”

According to Lauro, Attorney General Merrick Garland “did not want to do this case and didn’t want to go after President Trump.” Garland, however, caved to pressure from Joe Biden and Democrats to pursue both investigations. “The Biden administration was pushing, pushing, pushing and what Garland did is say, ‘ok, I’ll give you what you’re looking for. I’ll give you Jack Smith.’” Garland, Lauro said, knew Smith was a “political hack” but wanted to “wash his hands” of both cases and “hide behind the veneer” of an alleged independent prosecutor without direct ties to the attorney general.

A Trigger-Happy Special Counsel Team in More Ways than One

While Smith rushed to get the J6 case before a jury in the most Democratic city in the nation to put Trump behind bars before Election Day, the special counsel hit a major roadblock: the question of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. Unlike the documents case in Florida, which related to accusations about the president’s conduct after he left the White House, the J6 case covered the waning weeks of the Trump administration, representing the first time in history an American president faced criminal charges for acts in office.

Lauro filed a motion in October 2023 seeking to dismiss the case based on presidential immunity. “Breaking 234 years of precedent, the incumbent administration has charged President Trump for acts that lie not just within the ‘outer perimeter,’ [referring to Nixon v Fitzgerald, a Supreme Court decision concerning civil liability] but at the heart of his official responsibilities as President. In doing so, the prosecution does not, and cannot, argue that President Trump’s efforts to ensure election integrity, and to advocate for the same, were outside the scope of his duties,” Lauro argued.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, the Obama appointee presiding over the case, disagreed. In a sweeping opinion published in December 2023, Chutkan denied the president all forms of immunity. “[The] Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” Chutkan preached in an 48-page order, slim considering the historic nature of her decision.

But because her order dealt with a question of immunity, the president was entitled to an automatic appeal. All proceedings were put on hold as the matter made its way through the higher courts.

Time, however, was running out—so Smith made what he called an “extraordinary request” by asking the Supreme Court to circumvent the appellate court, the normal next step, and take up the immunity question immediately. (The Court denied his request.) After the D.C. appellate court quickly upheld Chutkan’s decision, the issue then moved expeditiously to SCOTUS; oral arguments were held in April 2024.

And that’s when Lauro got another taste of the special counsel team’s brand of thuggery. “When we had the Supreme Court argument, we were in the lawyers lounge and one of Jack Smith’s henchmen pulled his jacket back and pointed at his gun and smiled at me,” Lauro said. “That was the message we got throughout that case.” (Lauro did not know the identity of the individual or whether he was a lawyer, investigator, or security officer with Smith’s office.)

A Rush to the Finish Line—Then Disaster for Smith

But the special counsel’s quick trigger—figuratively and perhaps literally—did little to sway the justices. In a 6-3 decision published on July 1, 2024, SCOTUS delivered a major blow to Smith’s J6 case by determining a broad swath of immunity for a U.S. president, subsequently requiring Smith to trim about nine pages from his J6 indictment.

Undeterred by yet another rebuke by the Supreme Court—in a unanimous 2016 opinion, SCOTUS overturned Smith’s marquee political corruption case—the special counsel gunned for the finish line. Chutkan restarted the proceedings in September 2024, two months shy of Election Day.

At the time, Kamala Harris was riding high as the “joyful” alternative to Trump, who was battling not just both federal indictments but also charges in Georgia, New York City, and the state of New York. Polls remained tight until Election Day.

And then—disaster for the Democrats. Trump won in a decisive fashion as Republicans retained the House and won the Senate.

Smith dropped the J6 case against the president on November 25, 2024 and abandoned his appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s July 2024 order dismissing the documents case based on Smith’s unconstitutional appointment. He resigned on January 10, 2025.

A 'Complete Existential Meltdown’ Avoided by Trump Victory

But by Smith now rearing his ugly head, the American people are reminded of what the country avoided by a Trump victory. Lauro speculated that “we would have come as close to a complete existential meltdown as the country did during the Civil War” if Trump had been put on trial under a Kamala Harris presidency. “I would have anticipated that they would not rest until everyone associated with President Trump was put in jail. I think if Kamala Harris had won, she would have done everything possible to completely end once and for all a populist political movement.”

Instead, as Trump has said, the hunters are the hunted. Smith is under investigation by House and Senate committees as well as by the office of special counsel for a potential Hatch Act violation. Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn this week sent the DOJ a criminal referral for Smith for prosecutorial misconduct and potential disbarment.

Three of Smith’s top henchmen—Thomas Windom, JP Cooney, and Jay Bratt—recently sat for depositions before the House Judiciary committee; Windom and Bratt refused to answer dozens of questions by invoking the Fifth Amendment and other protections.

In the end, the Biden plan to get Trump backfired. “Everything that Jack Smith did as a deranged prosecutor helped President Trump win the presidency,” Lauro said. “There’s no doubt in my mind the American people saw through the charade, they saw through the weaponization.”

Lauro compares Smith to James Comey, the now criminally indicted former director of the FBI, who many Democrats blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016. “[Smith] may very well be single-handedly responsible for electing the president.”

Wonder what the suddenly loquacious special counsel would say about that?