I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate,” he added.īefore his appointment as special counsel in the Trump investigations, Smith was the specialist prosecutor at The Hague’s Kosovo specialist chambers where he investigated war crimes from 1998 to 2000 during Kosovo’s war for independence from Serbia.
“The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. “I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice,” Smith said in a statement.
Smith, a 54-year-old veteran prosecutor appointed as special counsel by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, in November 2022, has now brought two indictments against Trump, the first one surrounding Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents that were discovered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.įollowing his appointment by Garland last November, Smith vowed to conduct the criminal investigations as thoroughly as possible.
