Jack Smith, the special counsel who initiated two criminal cases against President Donald Trump, received $140,000 in pro bono legal services from a well-known Washington law firm before resigning last month.
According to a disclosure obtained by POLITICO that Smith completed on January 10 in conjunction with his resignation from the Justice Department, Covington & Burling offered legal representation.
A spokeswoman for Covington declined to comment. Peter Koski and Lanny Breuer, two Covington lawyers representing Smith, did not answer to mails seeking comment.
It's unclear why Smith sought outside legal counsel, but Trump has regularly railed against Smith and his colleagues, threatening to fire them and even appearing to push for their criminal prosecution.
"They ought to throw Deranged Jack Smith and his Thug Prosecutors in jail," Trump wrote in a social media post in 2023, shortly after Smith filed a new indictment in the case charging Trump with illegally keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and conspiring to obstruct the investigation into their handling.
Earlier this month, on her first day on the job, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo condemning the "weaponization" of the Justice Department during the Biden administration and establishing a "working group" to study the matter.
Although the department has not announced a criminal, civil, or legal ethics investigation into Smith's actions, she has specifically directed the working group to investigate "weaponization by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff, who spent more than $50 million targeting President Trump, and the prosecutors and law enforcement personnel who participated in the unprecedented raid on President Trump's home."
During President Joe Biden's final days in office, there was widespread anticipation that he may pardon Smith and his gang. Biden eventually granted preemptive pardons to members of the House Jan. 6 Committee, former National Institutes of Health Director Anthony Fauci, and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley.
However, no pardons for DOJ prosecutors were ever granted.
Smith has ties to prominent lawyers at Covington, the largest law firm in D.C. Breuer, Covington's vice chair, served as head of the Justice Department's criminal division from 2009 to 2013. Breuer recruited Smith to take the pivotal post of chief of the department's Public Integrity Section in 2010.
Breuer has regularly supported Smith throughout interviews in recent years. "Jack is not political at all," Breuer told the New York Times soon after Smith was appointed special counsel in 2022. "He is straight down the middle."
Covington is also home to several other famous Justice Department officials, including Eric Holder, President Barack Obama's first attorney general. Another Covington partner, Alan Vinegrad, was the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York during Smith's time there, and he assigned him to prosecute a high-profile police brutality case.
The Justice Department appears to have approved Smith's request under an Office of Government Ethics regulation issued in 2023 that allows government employees to establish legal defense funds or receive such services for free if the work is related to "the employee's past or current official position" or a position on a presidential campaign or transition team. According to the rule, such agreements must be approved by an agency ethics official and documented on an employee's financial disclosure form.
