Trump says he will fire Jack Smith if elected in November

With election momentum swinging increasingly in Donald Trump's favor, speculation has turned to what some of his initial moves might be should he return to the Oval Office in January.

On Thursday, Trump revealed that among his first orders of business would be to facilitate the dismissal of special counsel Jack Smith, something he says would occur “within two seconds” of his new administration's start, as the Associated Press reports.

Trump vows special counsel's ouster

The former president's statement about Smith's possible fate came as part of a Thursday interview with radio personality Hugh Hewitt.

Hewitt asked whether Trump's first priority would be to issue himself a pardon or to simply fire Smith in order to move past some of the most significant legal challenges that have followed him for well over a year, namely, the two federal cases brought by the special counsel.

Trump did not hesitate to declare his intentions, saying, “It's so easy. I would fire him within two seconds.”

Referring to Smith, appointed to his current role by Attorney General Merrick Garland, as a “crooked person,” Trump added, “He'll be one of the first things addressed.

High-stakes election draws near

Ever since Trump's legal difficulties began to mount at the federal level as well as in states such as New York and Georgia, commentators and pundits have speculated about what impact the results of the 2024 election might have on pending cases.

As Forbes noted earlier this year, an electoral loss come Nov. 5 would likely mean that Trump's current cases would continue apace and potentially continue to the trial stage, with his New York criminal matter proceeding to sentencing, which has already been delayed more than once.

However, a Trump win would almost certainly signal the end of the federal cases brought against him, given that he would hold the power to appoint Justice Department officials disposed to dropping Smith's election interference case and stopping the special counsel's pending appeal of an earlier dismissal of the classified documents case against the former president.

Though Trump's election to a second term would not eliminate his existing New York convictions on charges of records falsification, it would almost certainly mean that the execution of any sentence in the case would be postponed until he leaves office, simply due to the logistical impediments to imposing custodial or travel restrictions on the president of the United States.

Scrutinizing Smith

Though a Trump victory at the polls could effectively handicap Smith's campaign of lawfare, the former president's legal team continues to take proactive steps to dismiss the election interference case via another avenue, namely, the argument that the special counsel was unlawfully appointed by Garland in the first place, a tack that proved successful in the classified documents matter.

Critics of Smith have amplified their skepticism of his tactics in recent weeks, particularly his filing of an unusually expansive, incendiary, and curiously-timed evidentiary memorandum in the Jan. 6-related case against Trump, as Breitbart noted, suggesting that the special counsel's actions themselves amount to brazen election interference.

In an op-ed written for the New York Times, Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith points to the violations of legal norms in which he believes Smith has engaged, including of longstanding Justice Department practices meant to prevent undue influence on voters in the run-up to an election.

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig concurred, saying that Smith's most recent gambit shows that he has “essentially abandoned any pretense; he'll bend any rule, switch up on any practice -- so long as he gets to chip away at Trump's electoral prospects. At this point, there's simply no defending Smith's conduct on any sort of principled or institutional basis,” and as such, Trump's promised firing of the special counsel looks all the more reasonable with every passing day.