We are airing this prior footage for the first time
on the beat.
I want you here as part of our special report
to really take this in.
Take a look at Jack Smith's detailed
explanation.
We don't want to live in a society where someone
is convicted based on what's in the newspapers.
I can tell you very often we have cases that
we investigate where there are allegations in the new newspapers
which if those allegations were true and
if those allegations were the complete story,
I could see why the average American would think that
is corrupt.
But we don't want to live in a Society of
of a form of mob rule where we just get
a few allegations without any process
convict somebody. But I think that's the role the prosecutors
to take allegations like that when they're public and investigate
and see if the facts actually back up.
What's there Is the allegation in the source of it
credible?
Let the facts lead to make sure it's credible and
don't do a lot of public hype through the media
or otherwise
in advance. Now, he was saying all that before taking
on this special counsel role.
It's just interesting tonight to see that.
Well, it seems he's been consistent.
That's how he described it then.
And that's how he's been acting and living through this
role.
Defendant Trump, not the first head of state that Smith
has put on trial either.
That's experience you may have heard about.
The Attorney General knew of it when he recruited Jack
Smith
for this post after his past prosecution of a sitting
head of state. Here's some background on that.
But now his past has caught up with him.
The president of Kosovo, Hashim Thachi,
is in The Hague for an interview with prosecutors who
have indicted him on war crimes charges.
He's been charged with 10 counts of war crimes and
crimes against humanity.
Jack Smith led that high stakes case
and we actually have some of this rare footage
of Smith making the case in court leading the prosecution.
And before I show it to you as part of
this report,
let me remind you this is something we have not
even seen yet in any of the Trump hearings thus
far.
Smith overseeing other experienced prosecutors to do this.
But how did he get to oversee them?
How did he get to this post?
By doing this many times in the past here we're
going to see how he does it.
Jack Smith striking a pretty calm and persistent posture,
sober in the courtroom, prosecuting alleged war crimes.
The truth will be laid before this court in the
coming weeks.
My office will be unrelenting
and unstopping. Fair administration of justice requires building
and fostering institutions that can protect.
Those who seek justice. To Mustafa,
use their power to victimize
and to brutalize fellow Kosovar Albanians.
No justification whatsoever for the inhumane conditions under which they
were held
or for the manner and
which they were brutalized and tortured during their detainment.
Watch this trial and watch those that follow.
Watch how this court functions and then judge.
There can never be an expiration date on accountability.
You will hear from victims
who have waited 2 decades 2 decades to be heard.
The charges here do not directly concern
the events of the war in Kosovo
occurring over 20 years ago.
They concerned attempts to intimidate people
into not telling this court what happened to them 20
years ago
and attempts to obstruct the work of this institution
at any cost.
It's pretty striking,
facing those documented horrors, that horror that people were put
through to live through,
and that quest for what justice might look like.
You see Jack Smith's approach.
He could have been more
dramatic. There was obviously pathos,
drama and sadness in what happened.
He could have been louder,
but he took that measured path.
That was his approach. He also argued in that same
trial that the authoritarian tried to use lies
and exploit propaganda and the media
as part of his criminal plots.
Now that might sound familiar here on the home front.
It's a point that actually echoes in Jack Smith's coup
indictment of Trump.
And while the US Constitution does value a Free Press,
which makes up its own minds with its freedom,
in that very case, as prosecutor,
Smith was careful to note something quite important,
at least in the view of the law,
that while the journalists would make up their own minds,
many journalists there rejected fraudulent and propaganda documents from
the accused.
Take a listen here is Smith.
In this rare court footage,
the accused and committing their crimes tried to amplify
the damage they caused by exhorting the media in Kosovo
to publish Ethical Journalists of Kosovo who refused
to publish the documents that the accused attempted to provide
them.
Jack Smith couldn't have known.
No one could have necessarily known how big a deal
fraudulent documents furnished in various intermediaries and through the press
and through politicians and hacks and lawyers and ultimately
well in America, ultimately pushed all the way up trying
to get it into
Vice President Pence's hands on January 6.
He couldn't have known the parallels here,
but there they are
at the Justice Department. I can tell you Jack Smith's
last big job before this one was leading the unit
that prosecutes corrupt politicians,
Public Integrity Department. It's supposed to be actually prepared for
with prior prosecutions of abuse of government regardless of whether
they were controversial or unpopular in the public realm.
Like a victorious prosecution and trial of a police officer
who abused Abner Louima.
Garnering a 30 year prison sentence,
which at the time was unheard of for officers and
unpopular among some prosecutors who work so closely with
police and FBI. But Smith
went right at it, just like he's taken on top
figures in both parties.
Consider someone who was once the Democratic Party's national
rising star before a rapid fall.
You may remember senator and
vice presidential nominee John Edwards.
Jack Smith led that prosecution in 2011.
Don and I are honest and realistic with the American
people,
the story that's sending shockwaves through the presidential campaign.
After months of denials, former candidate John Edwards admitted today
that he had an extramarital affair while his wife was
battling cancer.
The fall from grace for Democrat John Edwards was just
as stunning.
And tonight a new low after a federal grand jury
in North Carolina charged him with six felonies.
A new low takes you back to grand jury proceedings
there that we're moving a pace against
at the time. Someone other party Democratic then
now, where we've followed a lot of those against Republican
Donald Trump.
Smith oversaw the case and later in the context of
these types of cases in general,
not just Edwards, but the tricky balancing issues and lines
when you deal with politicians and corruption.
He explained that a fair prosecution for corruption does require
intent.
We've heard a lot about criminal intent in his current
coup case
and that proving that can be hard.
He recounted how government officials,
though, can be in denial
about their methods, their intent and the problems they have.
What was that person's intent?
Did they do this for that?
Did they
act corruptly? Often times when I go to speak to
folks about
their corruption programs and and what sort of cases they're
doing,
often times I go places and the first thing I
hear is that we don't have a corruption problem here,
Jack. And my immediate reaction is you definitely have a
corruption problem.
Some legal guffaws there, because what Smith is getting at
is
every place where there's power and money,
and any kind of temptation will have at least the
possibility
of those problems or corruption.
So if you don't think you're even susceptible to it,
or anyone in your entire department is,
then you're probably more susceptible than usual.
And the Edwards case? That theory was using illegal campaign
donations to conceal a mistress from voters,
and that theory fell apart at trial.
Edwards was found not guilty in a verdict on one
charge or mistrial on the others.
DOJ did not retry that case.
SO3 quick points there 1.
Jack Smith was nonpartisan. 2.
He was clearly aggressive. So aggressive he didn't actually win
over the jury on that case.
And three, and this is so important right now,
especially as Trump allies and others want to
make up stories or tell you narratives or outright lies
about
DOJ&FBI or Jack Smith without any look at the record.
And our point here in the special report is to
look factually at the record,
including the loss, the Edwards loss.
But the third piece here
is that Smith has a demonstrated respect for legal limits,
the kind of measured professional humility.
And again, we've gone through all this and picked out
the key footage for you.
This is something he has spoken about
in the sometimes baffling legal lines that are drawn for
pursuing
politicians.
The folks who commit these crimes are sophisticated individuals and
by and large,
they give the money and receive the money,
or give and receive the benefits in all sorts of
complicated forms
that make it not nearly as stark,
not nearly as easy to report in five lines in
a newspaper article.
And because of that, because of how they can,
these crimes are committed. Because they're often committed by
sophisticated people with great means,
we do need laws that are broad enough to reach
conduct.
I mean, right now, under the honest Services statute as
it exists,
we cannot charge undisclosed conflicts of interest.
So just imagine, just to follow up on that scenario,
you have a mayor and he takes bribes for city
contracts.
He takes bribes, he puts the money in his pocket
and he gives someone a contract who shouldn't have got
that contract.
Those average American taxpayers are not getting what they paid
for.
I can prosecute that case.
That's bribery. I can. I can prosecute that mayor.
And I think everyone would think that we should.
That same mayor says, you know what?
I don't want the bribes.
I want more money. I'm going to start my own
company
and I'm going to hide my interest in it
and I'm going to funnel the contracts to me.
I can't, I can't prosecute that case.
And I think the average American in terms of what's
wrong,
if you believe those facts,
if those facts and an objective investigation are brought to
light,
I think that average American wants the Department of Justice.
Really important point there that he makes.
I played it in full,
so you could really absorb it.
He says I can't prosecute that case.
He also makes it clear that he thinks
it would be good policy to be able to prosecute
that case and go so far as to say he
thinks most Americans would agree that if the politicians are
blatantly self dealing or doing corrupt things,
that's what the corruption laws ought to be for.
That sounds rational. But notice where he draws the line.
He cannot go beyond that.
He doesn't say. So we look for a loophole or
a trick or we threw a different charge at him
to make up for it,
or the ends justify the means or any of the
stuff that you don't want anyone in power,
especially the power to indict,
to prosecute, to jail, to seek
any level of punishment. You don't want those people playing
fast and loose.
And so it is striking.
I wanted you here as we go through the footage
that Jack Smith did,
quite the opposite. He will say quite clearly,
you might want to go farther.
It might sound like corruption,
but I can't go beyond what the honest services statute
says,
full stop. That's how we approach those high profile cases.
And he's got the highest profile case not only of
his career life
but, as Andrew Weisman and others have said,
probably the most important trial
in the history of the United States.