By Enyichukwu Enemanna
United States officials have commenced an investigation into Jack Smith, the former special prosecutor who led two cases against Donald Trump, now US President.
One of the cases accused Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden and the other of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Both cases were brought in 2023, over a year before the 2024 presidential election which Trump won. Indictments in the two cases cited what Smith and his team described as clear violations of well-established federal law.
Trump and his Republican allies, including Senator Tom Cotton, have accused Smith of violating the Hatch Act, a federal law which places ban on certain public officials from engaging in political activity.
In a social media post this week, Senator Cotton accused Smith of being a “partisan Democrat who weaponized the law” against Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election.
“I’ve asked the Office of Special Counsel to investigate his actions that likely violated the law to influence the election,” Cotton wrote on X.
Smith was appointed the special counsel to investigate Trump by then Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022.
Trump at that time denied any wrongdoing, claiming US prosecutors were politically motivated in the build-up to the polls last year.
Following Trump’s election for a second term in office November 2024, Smith dropped the cases without any of them going to trial.
Under a long-running practice of the Justice Department, a President-elect is not to be prosecuted on criminal charges, ultimately shielding Trump from having his days in court.
Smith then resigned from the department shortly before Trump was inaugurated in January.
US prosecutors said in a report at that time that if Trump had not won the 2024 race, he would have been convicted for “criminal efforts to retain power” following the 2020 election.
