CNN’s Elie Honig criticizes Jack Smith for denying 2024 election influenced his decision to prosecute Trump

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig scoffed at former special counsel Jack Smith on Wednesday for denying that the 2024 presidential election had any influence on his decision to prosecute President Donald Trump.

Smith stated during an interview with former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann that it is “ludicrous” to suggest that his two indictments against Trump were influenced by politics. Honig argued on “CNN News Central” that while Smith is not particularly partisan, it is “undeniable” that Smith rushed to bring the case to trial with the 2024 election in mind.

“Jack Smith is not a partisan, per se. He’s not going into this with a D or an R behind him. But he is, to use Abbe’s [Lowell] phrase, a heat seeking missile,” Honig said. “And that caused him, I argue in the book, to overextend and bend ordinary rules and procedures in order to rush the case and get Donald Trump tried artificially quickly so he could get him tried before the 2024 election. The record of that case makes it entirely clear. Now I’ll leave it up to people to decide whether rushing to get someone tried intentionally before an election is political or not. Jack Smith says his motives were pure, I don’t think the record quite supports that.”

“It’s undeniable that he was thinking about and acting with the 2024 election in mind in asking the judge to change ordinary rules and procedures and I think it’s wrong for him to deny that and claim ‘I had no awareness of the 2024 election.’ I think the record belies that,” Honig continued. 

WATCH:

Smith charged Trump with 37 felony counts on June 9, 2023, including 31 counts under the Espionage Act, over accusations that the then-former president unlawfully stored classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Judge Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed to the bench in his first term, dismissed the case on July 15, 2024, with the argument that the appointment of a special counsel violated the appointments clause of the Constitution.

In August 2023, Smith handed down four felony counts against Trump for allegedly attempting to interfere in the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. He charged Trump with “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” “conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the Jan. 6 proceedings” and “a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”

Smith requested that the trial for the latter indictment begin on Jan. 2, 2024, just before the Iowa Caucus had been scheduled to begin, while Trump’s legal team asked that it begin in April 2026. U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, scheduled the trial for March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday.

The Supreme Court ruled in July 2024 that any official act taken by the president is immune from prosecution. The ruling required Smith to submit a superseding indictment to comply with the immunity ruling. Chutkan released a redacted version of Smith’s 165-paged brief against Trump in October 2024, just weeks before the election.

After Trump won the election, Smith dismissed the case to comply with longstanding Department of Justice (DOJ) policy that presidents do not face prosecution while in office.

The House Judiciary Committee called on Smith to testify before Congress on Tuesday about his handling of the prosecutions against Trump.

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