Donald Trump called the appointment of a war crimes expert to investigate his actions shameful.

Peculiarities
  • Jack Smith, War Crimes Attorney, will serve as Special Counsel to the Justice Department’s investigations into Donald Trump.
  • The announcement comes three days after Trump announced he would run for president again in 2024.
  • Mr. Trump says he will “not be involved” in criminal investigations as a result of the appointment.
Donald Trump said the appointment of Jack Smith, a war crimes attorney, to lead two criminal investigations into his handling of confidential documents and attempts to cancel the 2020 election is “shameful” and aimed at “hunting me.”[ing”afterme”[ing”afterme”
“The Democratic Justice Department had nothing but Trump haters, so they just appointed a special prosecutor to prosecute me further. A shame!” — wrote the former US President in social networks.
In a statement to Fox News, he said he would “not be involved” in the two investigations led by Mr. Smith.

A White House spokesman said the White House was not involved in the decision-making process for the appointment.

Mr. Smith, who was called on Friday to lead a very sensitive investigation into Donald Trump, is a seasoned U.S. attorney who led the Kosovo war crimes investigation in The Hague.
In appointing Smith to head two ongoing criminal investigations that drew scorn from the former president and the fury of his supporters, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland stressed that Smith had “earned a reputation as an impartial and determined prosecutor.”
The veteran justice officer has extensive experience investigating complex war crimes cases and prosecuting defendants.
From 2008 to 2010, he worked as an investigator for the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, where he was assigned to oversee secret investigations of foreign government officials into war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Smith began his prosecutorial career in the 1990s.

He boasts a resume that includes several years with the Department of Justice in a variety of roles, including chief of the agency’s Public Integrity Division, where he led a team dealing with corruption and election-related crime cases, and then acting U.S. Attorney at a median district of Tennessee.
But his most high-profile work came at the Special Court for Kosovo in The Hague, where he led the investigation and sentencing of war crimes committed in the Balkans during the 1990s wars that tore Yugoslavia apart.

In 2018, Smith was appointed Chief Prosecutor of the Kosovo Special Chamber Court. The first trial began last year against former rebel commander Salih Mustafa, who faces murder and torture charges related to his time in a makeshift prison run by the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

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Smith called the case a “landmark” for the court, whose activities remain highly sensitive given that former rebel commanders still dominate Kosovo’s political life.
The court, which operates under Kosovo law but is based in the Netherlands to protect witnesses from intimidation, has indicted war crimes charges against several senior members of the KLA, including former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, who stepped down after the indictment.
Smith presided over Thaci’s first pre-trial appearance in a special court in 2020 to face charges.
In a statement released minutes after Garland’s announcement, Smith vowed to “independently” investigate Trump and any possible prosecutions.
“The pace of the investigation will not stop or weaken under my control,” he said.

“I will make an independent judgment and advance the investigation quickly and thoroughly to whatever result the facts and the law dictate.”