Who is Jack Smith, the special counsel who has sued Trump?

Jack Smith, appointed in November to investigate former President Donald J. Trump is a hard-working, tough-as-nails former prosecutor chosen for his experience in bringing high-interest cases against politicians in the United States and abroad.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland directed him to oversee two investigations into Mr. Trump: one into his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, including the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and the other to Mr Trump. Trump’s keeping of secret materials at his Florida residence.

“The right choice to complete these matters in an impartial and urgent manner,” Mr Garland said in announcing the appointment of Mr Smith, who served as Chief Prosecutor investigating war crimes in Kosovo at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. .

Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress have accused the Justice Department of conducting a politically motivated investigation designed to destroy Mr. Trump’s chances of retaking the White House, including by exposing details of the case to leak. But department officials have said Mr Smith, 54, intends to secretly conduct a fair inquiry – and Mr Smith has refused to even acknowledge questions from reporters who asked him outside his office in the northeast of Washington.

Here’s what you need to know about Mr. Smith:

He got his start as a federal prosecutor in New York City.

Mr. Smith was born on June 5, 1969 and grew up in Clay, NY, a suburb of Syracuse. He graduated from the State University of New York at Oneonta in 1991 before attending Harvard Law School.

In the 1990s, Mr. Smith became a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and he soon moved on to a similar job at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn. Over the next decade, he rose to a series of supervisory roles, including chief of criminal litigation, overseeing dozens of prosecutors prosecuting cases involving gangs, violent crime, financial fraud, and public corruption.

During that time, he met Marshall Miller, now the top adviser to Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco, and the two men worked closely together during an investigation into the brutal assault of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was sexually assaulted by police with a broomstick in a Brooklyn neighborhood in 1997.

Mr. Miller was instrumental in selecting Mr. Smith as special counsel and told Ms. Monaco and Mr. Garland that his independence and aggressiveness made him the ideal person for the job, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.

Mr. Smith has competed in 100 triathlons around the world.

Mr. Smith is an avid runner and cyclist who started competing in triathlons in 2002, even though he was initially a weak swimmer who could barely complete a single lap. Since then he has competed in at least nine full Iron Man triathlons, including in Germany, Brazil, Canada and Denmark.

It has not been without dangers. In the 2000s, he was hit by a truck while cycling, severely breaking his pelvis. “After the crash I was always dealing with an injury,” he said said in an interview in 2018. “I went through several years with many, many, many therapists with no real improvement.”

He headed the Department of Justice’s unit that investigates public corruption.

From 2010 to 2015, Mr. Smith led the Department of Justice’s public integrity unit, which investigates politicians and other public figures accused of corruption.

When he took over, the unit was reeling from the collapse of a criminal case against former Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. In Mr. Smith’s first few months on the job, he closed several high-profile investigations of members of Congress without charge.

At the time, Mr. Smith dismissed the suggestion that he had lost heart.

“If I were the kind of person to be intimidated,” said Mr. Smith, “I’d look for another job.”

Among his more notable corruption cases was a conviction of former Republican Governor of Virginia Robert McDonnell, later overturned by the Supreme Court, and a conviction of former Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona, who pardoned Mr. Trump during his final hour as chairman.

Mr. Smith was about to prosecute the former president of Kosovo when Mr. Garland called.

Mr Smith moved to The Hague in mid-2017 to oversee the prosecution of defendants charged with war crimes in the Kosovo conflict in the late 1990s.

When the assistants of Mr. Garland contacting Mr. Smith, he and his team were fresh from the conviction of a senior Kosovo official and preparing a case against the country’s former president, Hashim Thaci, who has been linked to the murder of 100 Albanians. , Roma and Serbs.

Mr Smith expressed regret that he could not be in The Hague for the trial, but, according to officials, eagerly accepted Mr Garland’s offer, saying he viewed his long-term commitments to the department as his primary professional responsibility. However, his arrival was delayed by another bicycle accident that badly injured his leg, and he arrived in Washington in late December.

He doesn’t like ‘playing with his food’.

Since then, Mr. Smith has assembled a team made up of career prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office in Washington and the State Department’s National Security Division who were already working on the Trump investigations, along with several trusted aides.

Veteran department prosecutors said the image Trump and his rivals have projected of Mr. Smith — as an eager prosecutor eager to press charges — misses the mark. They say he is determined to make decisions regardless of the outcome without delay and in line with his mandate to act before the 2024 campaign kicks off in full force.

Former colleagues said Mr. Smith’s most memorable trait was a stripped-down management style, where it was important to collect enough information to make a decision on charges as quickly as possible.

“He doesn’t like to sit there and play with his food,” said one person who worked with him for several years.