Donald Trump Says It’s ‘Time to Sue’ Jack Smith

Former President Donald Trump is threatening to file suit against Special Counsel Jack Smith over the August 2022 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to lead an independent investigation into Trump’s post-presidency handling of classified documents and his actions leading up to the January 6 attack U.S. Capitol attack in November 2022, three months after the former president’s South Florida home was searched in relation to the documents case.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump and has frequently been accused of bias in his favor, dismissed the documents case last week while ruling that Smith’s appointment had been “unconstitutional.” Smith has filed an appeal, with his office saying that the basis of Cannon’s decision “deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts.”

In a post to Truth Social on Monday, Trump suggested that Cannon’s decision could lead to a lawsuit against Smith and his prosecutorial team. He made the remarks while lashing out at Democratic Congressman James Clyburn, a close ally to President Joe Biden and one of the first to endorse the presidential run of Vice President Kamala Harris after Biden dropped out on Sunday.

“Somebody please explain to Rep. James Clyburn, not the brightest bulb in the House, that I am beating the Biden/Harris Prosecutors, like Deranged Jack Smith, whose case against me in Florida, ‘the biggest of them all’ according to the Radical Left Lunatics, was just ‘thrown out’ as being Unconstitutional,” Trump wrote.

“Now it is my time to sue them for illegally breaking into, and raiding, Mar-a-Lago,” he added. “All of these Biden/Harris cases against me are a Weaponization of Justice against their Political Opponent, Me — Strictly Third World Country. MAGA2024!”

As Smith and the documents case prosecutors were not involved in the case at the time of the Mar-a-Lago raid, the basis of Trump’s proposed lawsuit is unclear.

Newsweek reached out for comment to the offices of Smith and Clyburn via email on Monday.

While Trump did not specify what he was responding to with regards to Clyburn, the congressman did discuss the former president’s history with prosecutors while commenting earlier in the day on the presidential campaign of Harris, who was a former prosecutor and the California attorney general before entering national politics.

“She is well equipped to prosecute… the case against Donald Trump,” Clyburn said during a Monday morning appearance on MSNBC‘s Morning Joe. “He has lost against all of the prosecutors he’s gone up against this far [and] he’s gonna lose to this one.”

While Trump has not yet lost any prosecutions brought by Smith, he was convicted in May on 34 felony charges in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s unrelated case in New York, while Smith’s federal election subversion case and the case brought by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis remain active.

Donald Trump Jack Smith Lawsuit Threat
Former President Donald Trump is pictured during a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on July 20, 2024. Special Counsel Jack Smith is featured in the inset image. Trump threatened to sue Smith and prosecutors on…


Bill Pugliano; SAUL LOEB/AFP