Trump says he’d fire special counsel Jack Smith in 'two seconds' if elected again
"I would fire him within two seconds," Donald Trump said of special counsel Jack Smith. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would “fire” special counsel Jack Smith on his first day back in the White House if he is elected again, making clear that he would push to drop a pair of federal cases against him.
In an interview Thursday morning with conservative podcast host Hugh Hewitt, Trump was asked what he would do if he had to choose between firing Smith or pardoning himself at the start of a second term.
“Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy. … I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said of Smith, who is leading the Justice Department’s investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the hoarding of classified documents.
As part of the election-related investigation, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in August 2023 on four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
The classified-documents case has been dismissed, but Smith is appealing.
The authority to hire and fire a special counsel falls to the attorney general. But if Trump wins the election, he is expected to appoint an attorney general who would dismiss both federal cases against him.
Smith was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee both investigations.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign said Thursday that Trump’s latest comments indicate that the former president thinks he is above the law, while also pointing to a recent interview in which former Trump White House chief of staff John F. Kelly said he believed Trump met the definition of a fascist. Harris has said she agrees with that assessment.
“A second Trump term, where a more unstable and unhinged Trump has essentially no guardrails and is surrounded by loyalists who will enable his worst instincts, is guaranteed to be more dangerous,” Harris campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “America can’t risk a second Trump term.”
Smith and the Justice Department are not involved in two state criminal cases that Trump has faced, including his conviction this spring in Manhattan of fraud related to a hush money payment ahead of the 2016 election. In a pending case, he faces an indictment in Georgia for alleged election interference in that state.
Trump has referred to the investigations into his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and classified documents found in his Mar-a-Lago home as part of a “witch hunt” against him, and he has attacked prosecutors and judges.
Trump has also escalated attacks on perceived enemies, promising to exact retribution if he gets a second term. He recently suggested the military could be sent after fellow Americans whom he calls “the enemy from within.” He proposed last year appointing his own special prosecutor to go after Joe Biden and his family to chants of “Lock him up!” from his audience.
Trump has justified his calls for retribution by pointing to the court cases against him. Asked if he would “lock up” his foes, he told Glenn Beck last year, “The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us.”
He has continued to repeat those claims—which Harris’s campaign has pointed to as warnings that a second Trump term would be worse than the first.
In June, Trump said prosecutions of his political opponents would be “wrong” but that he also would have “every right” to do so if reelected.
“Look, when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them,” Trump said then, days after a jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York hush money case.
Perry Stein contributed to this report.
