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Victor Davis Hanson Explains Why A Reckoning Awaits Jack Smith

Victor Davis Hanson Has A List Explaining Why Jack Smith Headed For Reckoning (Screenshot/Fox News)

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson said Tuesday that former special counsel Jack Smith faces a reckoning over what Hanson called a pattern of biased and politically motivated behavior.

Newly released documents on Tuesday show Smith requested almost two years of phone records from FBI Director Kash Patel. Appearing on “The Ingraham Angle,” Hanson said Smith will answer for his actions.

“I think Jack Smith has got a reckoning, a rendezvous coming. He had a poor record with the governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell,” Hanson told Laura Ingraham. “He took legal services free from his firm, and he didn’t really report that as income. He surveilled congressmen and senators. He wasn’t unbiased. His family had political ties, pretty intimate with the Democrats. Everything about him reeked of impartiality. And I think he got his comeuppance.”

Smith prosecuted then-Republican Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in a 2014 federal corruption case, in which a jury convicted McDonnell on multiple counts, including conspiracy and extortion. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned that conviction on June 27, 2016, ruling that the definition of an official act had been applied too broadly.

Hanson challenged the perception of Smith as a professional, unbiased prosecutor.

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“It’s just a question now if he’ll have to atone for the things he did. But he had this image that he was this professional prosecutor like Fitzgerald or Mueller, and we don’t dare ask about their credentials or their impartiality. They were ideologues from the beginning. And they warped the law for their own political purposes,” Hanson said.

In 2025, the Office of Special Counsel opened an ethics investigation into Smith to examine whether he violated the Hatch Act by engaging in prohibited political activity while prosecuting President Donald Trump. Smith, while serving as special counsel, admitted during a public House Judiciary Committee hearing that he had sought secret subpoenas for phone records and other data from lawmakers and did not rule out testimony from a witness whose credibility had been questioned.

Three phone company executives appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February to explain why they complied with subpoenas from Smith’s team. Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T responded to at least 84 subpoenas during the Arctic Frost investigation. AT&T was the only company to challenge a subpoena, asking Smith’s team whether a request for Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s records might violate constitutional protections.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Fox News)