Special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought federal charges against former President Trump, is an “overzealous” prosecutor who relies on ethically dubious tactics including media leaks and enticing witnesses to win a conviction, say those who have been caught in his snare.

Mr. Smith headed the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section during the Obama administration from 2010 to 2015, when he led a team of 30 prosecutors pursuing public corruption cases against major political figures.

During that time, Mr. Smith and his team — some of whom are working on the Trump case — followed a familiar playbook. It’s a script that earned him a reputation as a hard-driving, intense prosecutor, but also a string of mistrials, overturned convictions and sharp rebukes from federal judges, including Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

“These are no white knights. They are very dangerous and will use any tactics to win at all costs,” said former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican who was convicted by Mr. Smith’s team in 2013 on corruption and fraud charges.

Mr. Renzi has maintained his innocence but served nearly two years in prison before he was pardoned in 2021 by Mr. Trump. He credits a 190-page white paper submitted to the Justice Department by his legal team alleging “repeated, concealed and corrosive” misconduct by prosecutors as the reason he secured a pardon.

He said he’s “shocked” by the similarities between his case and the prosecution of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump was charged with 37 felony counts, including the willful retention of national defense information, obstruction and false statements. Walt Nauta, an aide to the former president, has also been indicted in the investigation.

A review of Mr. Smith’s most prominent cases found that his team followed the same playbook in the Trump case as in other political prosecutions. That playbook has resulted in a spotty record of success in high-stakes cases targeting both Republicans and Democrats:

• Mr. Smith’s conviction against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican accused of accepting payments and gifts in violation of federal public corruption laws, was overturned by the Supreme Court.

• The case against former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, a Democratic presidential candidate accused of illegally using campaigning cash to conceal his mistress and love child, ended with a hung jury and mistrial.

• The prosecution of Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat accused of taking bribes, collapsed in a mistrial.

• The conviction of New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, on federal corruption charges was overturned by an appeals court. He was convicted during a second trial, but an appeals court threw out three of the six guilty verdicts. He died last year.

“Government lawyers have a higher duty to the truth and cause of justice and that’s where some of these government prosecutors, like Mr. Smith, have fallen short,” Mr. McDonnell said. “They are smart and well-credentialed, but they don’t seem to be exercising good judgment when it comes to this point.”

Mr. Menendez declined to comment.

A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment for this story.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has staunchly defended Mr. Smith’s standing as a “veteran career prosecutor.”

“As I said when I appointed Mr. Smith, I did so because it underscores the Justice Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability,” Mr. Garland said last month. “He has assembled a group of experienced and talented prosecutors and agents who share his commitment to integrity and the rule of law.”

Attorney-client privilege

Several patterns emerge across most of Mr. Smith’s high-profile prosecutions. The first is a questionable piercing of the attorney-client privilege.

In the Trump case, Mr. Smith’s team got around the privilege by convincing a federal judge to set aside the protections under the crime-fraud exception. The exception allows attorneys to break attorney-client privilege if they believe the legal advice was used in furthering a crime.

The ruling allowed prosecutors to access notes taken by Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, which formed the basis for much of the allegations in the Trump case.

Mr. Smith took a similar tack in the Renzi case, submitting as evidence recordings of the former lawmaker’s private conversations with his attorneys.

U.S. District Judge David Bury concluded that prosecutors unlawfully recorded the calls and ordered them to be suppressed, along with the fact that the calls were wiretapped.

“The government’s conduct, in its totality, warrants a more significant sanction than just suppressing the privileged evidence. The court suppresses the wiretap,” Judge Bury said, adding that the government “acted unreasonably” to “exceed its authority.”

Mr. Smith was more successful in the McDonnell case when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld that emails sent to the former governor from a government attorney were not protected by the attorney-client privilege. The court concluded Mr. McDonnell’s legal team failed to prove the emails constituted legal advice.

Mr. McDonnell said he’s still “stunned and incredibly disappointed” that confidential discussions he had with his attorney were disclosed to a grand jury.

Media leaks

Another hallmark of a Smith prosecution is leaks to the news media, with several high-profile cases being punctuated by news reports revealing evidence favorable to the prosecution.

Mr. McDonnell said the case against him was littered with a steady stream of leaks, beginning with a report of the investigation appearing in a newspaper.

“There is no question the initial story came from the government leaking things to The Washington Post,” he said. “There was a grand jury impaneled and it was pretty clear that grand jury information was being leaked to The Washington Post, which is a separate violation of the law.”

Mr. Renzi’s experience was somewhat similar. Ahead of the 2006 midterms in which his seat was hotly contested, news of his corruption investigation appeared in local and national media with some of the stories citing Justice Department officials.

The leaks were so pervasive that Justice Department officials, including then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, issued a memorandum with a “stern message” about prosecutors’ obligation to preserve the confidentiality of investigations.

In the Menendez case, his legal team said prosecutors engaged in a deliberate pattern of media leaks that damaged his credibility with the public to increase the chances of indictment, saying their actions amounted to “serious misconduct.”

Last month, several outlets published a leaked audio recording of a 2021 private meeting between Mr. Trump and staffers in which the former president discusses holding secret government documents he did not declassify.

“The media leaks are a three-pronged attack,” Mr. Renzi said. “It taints the jury pool, suppresses voter turnout and pressures the judge to rule in their favor.”

Witness enticement

A lawyer for Mr. Nauta alleges that while trying to secure his cooperation, a prosecutor on Mr. Smith’s team suggested that the defense lawyer’s application for a judgeship would be considered more favorably if he and his client turned against Mr. Trump. The lawyer, Stanley Woodward, has fled a complaint alleging prosecutorial misconduct with the chief U.S. judge in Washington.

In the McDonnell case, prosecutors filed charges against his wife and promised to drop the charges if she would testify against him.

The government has also promised to pay $25,000 to the cooperating witness in the Renzi case. However, prosecutors invoked his testimony more than 90 times during closing arguments and asserted that the witness, Phillip Aries, had not received “one thin dime” for his cooperation.

Weeks before Mr. Renzi’s Supreme Court petition, Mr. Aries emailed a prosecutor seeking his $25,000 payment, which he said would be like “winning the lottery.”

While the payment pledge was made by the FBI, Mr. Renzi has contended that Mr. Smith’s team was aware of the promise and concealed it from his legal team.

Pushing limits of the law

Another hallmark appears to be a broad interpretation of the law, resulting in several rebukes or failed prosecutions in Mr. Smith’s political cases.

Mr. Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, was charged with six counts, including three counts of violating the Federal Election Campaign Act.

The case ended embarrassingly for the Justice Department, with the jury deadlocking on five of the six felony counts and acquitting him on the last one.

The National Review, a conservative news journal, ripped the prosecution ahead of the trial, saying the government’s claims that efforts to conceal an extramarital affair and illegitimate child amounted to election fraud were dubious.

In the Menendez case, 10 out of the 12 jurors in the case said prosecutors stretched the definition of the bribery and corruption statute and failed to make the case that the gifts he received violated federal law.

However, the most stunning condemnation came in the McDonnell case after his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court.

“There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that,” Justice Roberts wrote in a unanimous opinion. “But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the Government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute.”

• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.