Jack Smith and allies are making new moves as Republicans mount pressure

Former special counsel Jack Smith and his allies are leveraging their experience prosecuting President Donald Trump to criticize his administration and launch new legal campaigns.

Two top prosecutors for former special prosecutor Jack Smith, Molly Gaston and J.P. Cooney, launched their own law firm, Gaston & Cooney, which will focus on helping state and local governments enforce “public corruption” laws, criminal defense and supporting clients subject to congressional investigations, according to the website.

Gaston and Cooney worked on Smith’s election interference case against Trump, which was dropped when Trump won the 2024 election. They were fired from the Department of Justice (DOJ) in January, alongside ten other officials.

“We will offer a unique combination of services, including public integrity counseling to state and local governments, strategic representation at every stage of congressional and criminal investigations, and trial-ready representation in criminal and civil cases,” Cooney wrote on Wednesday via LinkedIn. “We are thrilled to join the emerging market of boutique firms offering independent representation and zealous advocacy.”

“In the wake of the federal government’s decision to greatly reduce its enforcement of public corruption and civil rights laws, we help state and local governments fill the void,” a fact sheet on the firm’s website states.

Cooney told CBS News on Wednesday that they are “immensely proud of the work that we did with Jack Smith and with the body of our work.”

Gaston told the outlet that “institutional relationships are crumbling right now,” which offers “an opportunity and a need for the kind of services that we will provide to impartially and independently give advice and guidance.”

Many Biden DOJ employees joined left-wing legal groups like Democracy Forward and Common Cause or launched their own firms after leaving the department, the DCNF previously reported.

Gaston & Cooney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Smith Speaks Out

During two recent appearances at universities, Smith openly criticized Trump’s DOJ. The indictment of former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey “reeks of lack of process,” he said during an interview with former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann at the University College London.

“You know, there’s a process to secure an indictment,” Smith said. “There’s a process of predication, having some evidence before you do that…The career prosecutors, the apolitical prosecutors who analyzed this said there wasn’t a case. And so they brought somebody in who had never been a criminal prosecutor on days’ notice to secure an indictment a day before the statute of limitations ended.”

Comey was indicted on two counts for allegedly lying to Congress about authorizing “someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” related to an investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his September 2020 testimony and obstructing a congressional proceeding. Lindsey Halligan brought the indictment days after the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia resigned under pressure from President Donald Trump.

Smith a;sp appeared in an Oct. 15 video published by Justice Connection, a group of former DOJ employees launched in February to provide support for “colleagues who’ve been targeted by this administration.” The organization’s founder, Stacey Young, now frequently appears in media reports criticizing the Trump administration.

Smith said in the video that Justice Connection “supported my team when they were unjustly fired.” The group’s communications director, Peter Carr, worked as a spokesperson for both Smith and special counsel Robert Mueller at the DOJ.

‘Politics Never Influenced His Decision’

Senate Judiciary Chair Sen. Chuck Grassley released documents Oct. 6 showing the FBI obtained cell phone records for nine Republican members of Congress as part of the Arctic Frost probe, which was behind Smith’s election interference case against Trump.

Smith’s attorneys wrote in a Tuesday letter to Grassley that his “subpoena for toll records was entirely proper, lawful, and consistent with established Department of Justice policy.”

“Although you have not reached out to us to discuss this matter, we are compelled to correct inaccurate assertions made by you and others concerning the issuance of a grand jury subpoena for the toll records of eight Senators and one Member of the House of Representative,”  Attorneys Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski wrote. “Mr. Smith’s actions as Special Counsel were consistent with the decisions of a prosecutor who has devoted his career to following the facts and the law, without fear or favor and without regard for the political consequences.”

Smith’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan called Smith to testify before the committee in a letter Oct. 14.

Several top prosecutors in Smith’s office, Jay Bratt and Thomas Windom, previously invoked privileges and the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions during House Judiciary Committee testimony, according to Jordan’s letter.

Five Republican members of Congress signed a letter Friday urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to refer Smith to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), suggesting he should face disbarment.

Smith is already facing an ethics investigation by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an “independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency.” Paul Ingrassia, Trump’s nominee to lead OSC, withdrew Tuesday because he did not have “enough Republican votes” in the wake of leaked messages published by Politico.

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