Jack Smith served as Specialist Prosecutor between 7 May 2018 and 18 November 2022, succeeding David Schwendiman, who served as Specialist Prosecutor between 1 September 2016 and 31 March 2018.
Mr Smith is a US prosecutor with experience in both high-level political investigations and international criminal investigations. Before becoming Specialist Prosecutor, Mr Smith was Vice President and Head of Litigation for the Hospital Corporation of America, the largest non-governmental health-care provider in the United States, a position he had been in from September 2017.
Between February 2015 and August 2017, Mr Smith served as First Assistant US Attorney and Acting US Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee.
Between 2010 and 2015, Mr Smith served as Chief of the Public Integrity Section of the US Department of Justice, supervising the litigation of complex public corruption cases across the United States.
From 2008 to 2010, Mr Smith served as Investigation Coordinator in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC). In that capacity, he supervised sensitive investigations of foreign government officials and militia for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Mr Smith joined the ICC from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, where he served for nine years in a number of positions, including Chief of Criminal Litigation and Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division. As Chief of Criminal Litigation, Mr Smith supervised approximately 100 criminal prosecutors across a range of programme areas, including public corruption, terrorism, violent crime and gangs, as well as white collar and complex financial fraud.
Before becoming an Assistant US Attorney, Mr Smith served for five years as an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office where he was a member of the Office’s Sex Crimes and Domestic Violence Units.
Mr Smith has received a number of awards during the course of his career. These include the US Department of Justice Director’s Award; the US Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service; the Federal Bar Association’s Younger Federal Attorney Award; the Eastern District Association’s Charles Rose Award; the Henry L. Stimson Medal of the New York County Bar Association; and a Harvard Law School Wasserstein Fellowship.
He is a graduate of both Harvard Law School and the State University of New York at Oneonta.
Mr Schwendiman is a former US Federal Prosecutor and one-time Deputy Chief Prosecutor and Head of the Special Department for War Crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He became Specialist Prosecutor when the Special Investigative Task Force (SITF) transitioned into the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office (SPO), having been Lead Prosecutor of the SITF from June 2015.
Before joining the SITF, he worked in Kabul, Afghanistan, as Assistant Special Inspector General/Director of Forward Planning for the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and, before that, as US Department of Justice Attaché at the US Embassy.
Between 2006 and 2009, Mr Schwendiman served as an international prosecutor in the Special Department for War Crimes of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina where he investigated and prosecuted war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-95 Bosnian War. Between November 2007 and the end of 2009, he was Deputy Chief Prosecutor and Head of the Special Department for War Crimes.
Mr Schwendiman represented the US Attorney General in connection with security planning, preparation and execution for three Olympic Games – Sydney 2000, Salt Lake City 2002 and Athens 2004. He also completed multiple assignments for the US Department of Justice in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Thailand and Vietnam.
Mr Schwendiman began his career as a prosecutor at the Utah Attorney General’s Office in 1976. He returned to the Utah Attorney General’s Office in 1984, after serving seven years as a judge advocate in the US Navy, where he attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He joined the US Department of Justice as an Assistant US Attorney in the District of Utah in 1986, holding various positions, including Senior Litigation Counsel, First Assistant US Attorney and Interim US Attorney in the District of Utah, before retiring from the US Department of Justice in 2014.
Mr Schwendiman graduated from the University of Utah College of Law, now the S.J. Quinney College of Law, in 1976, and has been an Adjunct Professor of Law there since 1994.