Bob McDonnell blasts Jack Smith's partisan 'overzealous' charging in high-profile cases
Former
Virginia Gov.
Bob McDonnell spoke out against special counsel
Jack Smith, the prosecutor pursuing federal charges against former President Donald Trump, who was also involved in a case against McDonnell close to 10 years ago.
The former governor had extensive legal expertise as an attorney, serving as a JAG officer in the Army Reserve. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1992 to 2006 and Virginia attorney general from 2006 to 2009.
McDonnell and his wife were charged with improperly accepting gifts and loans from a donor. Their convictions were later overturned.
Smith's prosecution cost the governor $28 million in legal fees and three and half years of "very difficult times" for his family.
The end result of the investigation and legal troubles was a unanimous
Supreme Court decision overturning the governor's corruption conviction.
The court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, called the position of the federal prosecutors “boundless” in their definition of the act of simply agreeing to meet with someone and was insufficient to trigger a corruption conviction.
McDonnell said that "it says a lot" that all of the Supreme Court justices, including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, all agreed on a unanimous decision in favor of McDonnell.
McDonnell went on to lay out how Smith had a history of "partisan" legal overreach in the government.
"He and his team told
Lois Lerner at the IRS. He said it was OK to target certain conservatives and audit their tax returns. The botched the case against the former vice presidential candidate John Edwards that lead to a mistrial. They ended up in a hung jury in the Bob Menendez case and then you got my case," he said.
The former Virginia governor said that
Smith's legal history shows him that the prosecutor is very "partisan" in high-profile cases and "exercised bad judgment" with "overzealousness about charging."
Bob McDonnell blasts Jack Smith's partisan 'overzealous' charging in high-profile cases