Overnight leading up to the July 4th holiday, former president Donald Trump took to Truth Social — the social media platform created by Trump Media & Technology Group in 2021 — to once again lash out at special counsel Jack Smith. He wrote: "Jack Smith is a major SleazeBag put up by the corrupt DOJ to damage the Republican Party. He is all about ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!"
Beneath the post, Trump linked out to an old Washington Examiner article from November that discussed how Smith had been interviewed in 2014 as part of a Republican-led IRS probe. As CNN reported, during those discussions, Smith said that he had discussions about opening investigations during former President Barack Obama's term, but those investigations never moved forward. Smith was appointed last November by Attorney General Merrick Garland to take over two Justice Department investigations involving Trump. The first involves Trump's handling of classified documents after leaving the White House in January 2021; the second examines his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. election. Grand juries in Washington have been hearing testimony from witnesses in recent months for both investigations.
This late-night attack on Smith, who has already slapped Trump with a 37-count indictment, is part of a pattern of behavior for the former president. As Salon's Tatyana Tandanpolie reported on June 28, experts fear Trump is encouraging followers to target Jack Smith's family. New York University history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who is a scholar of authoritarianism, told HuffPost that "once again, Trump is acting like a Mafia boss and also stringing as many propaganda slogans together as possible."
