WASHINGTON – Donald Trump said Thursday that if he wins the White House, he will fire special adviser Jack Smith “within two seconds” of taking office.
During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump was asked whether he would pardon himself first or release Smith to clear the legal cloud hanging over him. Smith, a 2022 appointee of Attorney General Merrick Garland, accused the former president of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of secret documents.
“It’s that simple. I would fire him in two seconds,” Trump replied. “It will be one of the first issues we address.”
Trump, who regularly attacks Smith and has previously suggested that if he became president he would fire him, called Smith a “dishonest person.”
Trump, if elected, could order the Justice Department to remove Smith. Trump probably couldn’t do it on his own because Smith is not a presidential candidate.
When Trump, while president, was under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump urged his then-White House counsel, Don McGahn, to pressure the Justice Department to fire Mueller. McGahn refused.
Smith has filed two federal cases against Trump. One of them, accusing him of illegally storing secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, was dismissed in July, a decision Smith is appealing. The second, accusing him of conspiring to invalidate the 2020 presidential election, was delayed by the Supreme Court’s opinion granting broad immunity for official acts committed during his presidency.
After Trump said he would fire Smith, Hewitt raised the possibility that Congress could impeach Trump over the move. Trump said he didn’t believe it would happen.
“I don’t think they’ll impeach me if I fire Jack Smith,” Trump said. “Jack Smith is a scoundrel.”
Democrat Kamala Harris’ campaign sought to use revelations from Smith’s investigation into Trump against the Republican candidate. Earlier this month, they released an ad featuring video of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and headlines from the Smith investigation.
“He knew what he was doing,” the ad says.
Trump criticized Smith and praised U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who dismissed a classified documents case against the former president in July.
“We had a brave, brilliant judge in Florida,” Trump said. – She’s an excellent judge, by the way. I don’t know her. I’ve never talked to her. I’ve never talked to her. But we had a brave and very brilliant judge.”
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