Ric Grenell exposes Jack Smith as the king of sleaze

Ric Grenell, President Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, and Director of National Intelligence, knows a thing or two about Jack Smith, having lived in Europe when Smith was active in prosecuting war crimes in The Hague.

Now that Smith has been caught tampering with evidence in his case against President Trump, Grenell’s put out a devastating series of tweets about Smith’s history of dishonest behavior.

Let’s be clear:

Jack Smith is accused of tampering with evidence, manufacturing witnesses, bribery and corruption…

And that’s in the investigation of the President of Kosovo 3 years ago when Jack Smith worked at The Hague.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) May 5, 2024

This is not his first rodeo for this kind of sleaze, it’s actually how he rolls:

Congress should ask Bruce Swartz what he said to Jack Smith after I told him that Serbia and Kosovo had agreed to end his job and The Hague court for Kosovo/Serbia.

Bruce told me that he thought Jack Smith wouldn’t like having his job dissolved and so he wanted to talk to Jack…

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) May 6, 2024

And as I’ve said before, I still have a voicemail saved from Bruce Swartz to me from January 29, 2020.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) May 6, 2024

Congress should ask Bruce Swartz what he said to Jack Smith after I told him that Serbia and Kosovo had agreed to end his job and The Hague court for Kosovo/Serbia.

Bruce told me that he thought Jack Smith wouldn’t like having his job dissolved and so he wanted to talk to Jack…

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) May 6, 2024

The latter two tweets involving Swartz are a little hard to follow if you don’t read Balkan news, but this Balkan press item in English, written by an American international judge, gives some of the background of that Smith prosecution of the elected and sitting Kosovo president from four years ago:

In November 2018, I had the pleasure of attending a speech given by [Smith-indicted Kosovo President] Thaci to US governmental officials, foreign ambassadors, policy analysts, dignitaries, members of the public and media outlets at the Atlantic Council, a well-reputed Washington think-tank.

“His key point, which he delivered emphatically, was that despite the horrors of the war with Serbia, which Kosovo will never forget, Kosovo was prepared to negotiate a final and permanent settlement agreement with Serbia, and that the time to do so is now. He was roundly applauded,” I wrote at the time.

Two weeks later, President Trump took an unusually proactive position by writing directly to Thaci and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic, imploring them to sign an agreement and suggesting that they would be invited to the White House to commemorate it.

However, at the same time, Thaci was dogged by allegations that he had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity as initially claimed by Council of Europe human rights rapporteur Dick Marty in his infamous report of 2010 titled ‘Inhuman Treatment of People and Illicit Trafficking in Human Organs’.

Marty’s report, which was adopted by the Council of Europe in January 2011, and a subsequent investigation ultimately led to the creation of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague, which opened for business in 2017. The court is designed specifically to prosecute former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, while having no jurisdiction over Serbian war criminals, and is generally loathed in Kosovo.

One of the key reasons for creating the court in a far-away location was the fear of witness intimidation if any of the high-level cases, like Thaci’s, were prosecuted in Kosovo.

American prosecutor Jack Smith, who had been a top-tier prosecutor at the US Justice Department, took office as the chief prosecutor at the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague in September 2018, and spent the next two years continuing the investigation of Thaci and others.

On June 24, 2020, while the investigation was still underway, Thaci was in route to Washington at the invitation of President Trump to meet with him and Serbian President Vucic at the White House on June 27 in an effort to bring the two sides closer together, a historic opportunity.

However, at the very same time, Smith’s office issued a press release stating that an indictment had been filed against Thaci (and three other KLA veterans), causing Thaci to return home immediately, and the White House meeting to be cancelled, surely a lost opportunity for normalising relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

Wow. Trump was out sealing the deal for peace in that war-ravaged land and Smith, despite hearing that peace was at hand, went ahead with the prosecutions just ahead of the Trump signing, just to Get Trump, and too bad if no peace happened. Anything but allow Trump to take credit for yet another peace deal. Smith seems to be a fan of more war, more swamp consultant contracts, and who cares about legal ethics, let alone peace.

Grenell is also speaking out, because he had been watching Smith and his sleazy lawfare tactics in Europe well before he appeared on the news radar here in the states:

Jack Smith has a history of this – at home and abroad

Ric Grenell @RichardGrenell exposes a major corruption scandal that the American media refuses to cover

Oh I wonder why https://t.co/HM6IVVJRaq pic.twitter.com/sur5SBuwVw

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 5, 2024

Grenell outlines a charge by a Spain-based Kosovar businessman with ties to Russia who alleges that Smith took a $16 million bribe from two Russians to have sanctions dropped, which if true, is a doozy. Grenell says it’s been all over the Balkan press since last December, individual parts of the story have been confirmed as true, and “there’s definitely smoke,” so at a minimum, the allegation should be investigated or at least looked into by the press here, which he urges.

Grenell said that Smith also coaxed the businessman to find individuals to pin something on Kosovo’s president for his Hague case, while at the same time the cash was being allegedly offered.

He also said he heard recordings from Smith and his prosecutors where the prosecutors objected to Smith mischaracterizing what they were saying, saying they were putting words in his mouth. He’s not a guy who seems to care about the facts.

Since then, John Ratcliffe, an intelligence-community colleague of Grenell’s from the Trump administration, summed up the Smith sleaze against Trump here:

Jack Smith admits “mishandling” classified documents evidence and then “misrepresenting” that fact to the Court. Tampering evidence and then lying to the court reeks of Crossfire Hurricane, when the Obama-Biden DOJ got caught doing the same thing to illegally spy on the Trump…

— John Ratcliffe (@JohnRatcliffe) May 5, 2024

With that kind of record on Europe, it should come as no surprise to anyone that this is what he is doing now.

Grenell also added this:

???????????? Breaking:

Democrat Marie Harf says on @FoxNewsSunday that Democrats believe the J6 and Georgia cases are their best hope of getting Trump.

She drops any mention of the Jack Smith cases.

Jack Smith is imploding even with Democrats.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) May 5, 2024

Not sure what Grenell means by J6 case, as I think that is one of Smith’s two cases. I think it will be thrown out by the Supreme Court, actually, or Obama gets prosecuted for droning Americans. Grenell didn’t bring it up, but there is also the matter of Smith not being a government employee which is a legal requirement for being appointed a special counsel, which ought to get all of his cases tossed, too.

But it’s unmistakeable that Smith moves crooked and he’s been caught way too often. It’s helpful that Grenell is speaking out since no one else has the kind of information he has and the press is ignoring the story. There seems to be quite a dirty backstory to Smith and his sleazy doings against President Trump. Keep an eye on anything else Grenell may be posting because there could be more bombshells. Based on the behavior thus far seen, Smith needs to be yanked from the Trump case immediately.

Image: Screen shot from Associated Press video short, (cropped), via YouTube.