The State of the United States: A Conversation with Jack Smith

Video Description

Speaker: Jack Smith Interviewer: Andrew Weissmann (NYU) Support the work of UCL Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism www.ucl.ac.uk/giving/GCDC The second Trump administration has disrupted longstanding norms of US power at home and abroad. In an era of constitutional hardball where the Executive Branch is asserting ever greater levels of authority, what is the future of US democracy? How might leaders, citizens, and people outside the US shape the course of events? And what can we learn from how other countries have handled moments of democratic challenges and crisis? The State of the United States is a series of bold conversations, bringing prominent US judges, attorneys, legal experts, and media figures into discussion about democracy and constitutionalism in the Trump Era. The events also highlight the work of the UCL Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism, which is devoted to advancing knowledge of democratic governance, the rule of law, and constitutional resilience. About the Speaker Jack Smith has served as a local, national, and international prosecutor for over 30 years. His last appointment, from November of 2022 to January of 2025 was as Special Counsel at the United States Department of Justice where he was charged to investigate whether any person unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on January 6, 2021; and the possible unlawful possession of highly classified documents, as well as possible acts of obstruction of justice in the Southern District of Florida. The indictments brought against Donald Trump as a result of those investigations were dismissed pursuant to Department of Justice policy following the 2024 presidential election. Prior to his appointment as Special Counsel, from 2018 to 2022, Mr Smith led an international war crimes prosecutor’s office based in The Hague, The Netherlands, charged with investigating and prosecuting war crimes occurring in Kosovo from June 1998 through 2000. Mr. Smith has held a number of senior positions in the U.S. Department of Justice including Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, where he led an elite unit of 30 prosecutors litigating complex public corruption and election crimes cases throughout the United States; Chief of Criminal Litigation in the Eastern District of New York, in which he supervised approximately 100 prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York across a range of program areas including public corruption, civil rights, terrorism, violent crime and gangs and complex financial fraud; and Acting U.S. Attorney in the U.S Attorney’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee. From 2008 to 2010, Mr. Smith served as the Investigations Coordinator at the International Criminal Court where he supervised sensitive investigations of foreign government officials and militia for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Before becoming an federal prosecutor, Mr. Smith served for five years as an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office where he was a member of the Office’s Sex Crimes and Domestic Violence Units and conducted numerous jury trials. Mr. Smith has received a number of awards during the course of his career. These include the U.S Justice Department’s Director’s Award; the U.S. Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service; the Henry L. Stimson Medal from the New York County Bar Association; the Charles Rose Award from the Eastern District of New York Association, the Federal Law Enforcement Officer’s Association Investigative Excellence Award; the NYPD Honor Legion Award; the Tennessee Justice Center’s Pro Bono Attorney of the Year Award; the Federal Bar Association’s Young Federal Attorney Award; and a Wasserstein Fellowship from Harvard Law School. He is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and a summa cum laude graduate of the State University of New York at Oneonta. About the Interviewer Professor Andrew Weissmann is Professor of Practice at New York University. Professor Weissmann served as a lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office (2017-19) and as Chief of the Fraud Section in the Department of Justice (2015-2019). From 2011 to 2013, Weissmann served as the General Counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He previously served as special counsel to then-Director Mueller in 2005, after which he was a partner at Jenner & Block. From 2002-2005, he served as the Deputy and then the Director of the Enron Task Force in Washington, D.C., where he supervised the prosecution of more than 30 individuals in connection with the company’s collapse. Professor Weissmann is the co-host of the popular podcast Main Justice and is a frequent legal analyst for NBC/MSNBC. He serves on the board of Just Security and writes frequently for it, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post.