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Former US President Donald Trump will find that Special Counsel Jack Smith has dealt with the likes of him—and worse—before

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  1. updawg
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    TL;DR:

    Donald Trump openly flatters foreign autocrats such as Vladimir V. Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, and in many ways Mr. Trump governed as authoritarians do around the globe: enriching himself, stoking ethnic hatreds, seeking personal control over the courts and the military, clinging to power at all costs. So it is especially fitting that he has been notified that he may soon be indicted on charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election, by an American prosecutor who is deeply versed in investigating the world’s worst tyrants and war criminals.

    Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel — who has already indicted Mr. Trump on charges of illegally retaining secret documents and obstructing justice — has a formidable record as a career federal prosecutor in Tennessee, New York and Washington. Yet he also has distinctive expertise from two high-stakes tours of duty as an international war crimes prosecutor: first at the International Criminal Court and then at a special legal institution investigating war crimes in Kosovo. For several momentous years in The Hague, he oversaw investigations of foreign government officials and militia members who stood accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

    18 votes