Jack Smith spent two years trying to put President Trump in a prison cell.
Smith swore up and down that his office played everything by the book.
And now newly released Justice Department records exposed one frantic purchase Smith’s team made right before indicting Trump.
The “Desperate” Email Sitting in 844 Pages of Records
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith in November 2022 to run both the classified documents investigation and the January 6 investigation into Trump.
The Oversight Project sued the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act and pried loose 844 pages from Smith’s office. Breitbart News first reported what those pages show.
On June 26, 2023, Smith’s litigation support staff contacted Axon Investigate, a component of Axon Enterprises. The staff wanted software “for converting all types of video and audio files including lots of proprietary types we receive.”
Nobody has ever identified which proprietary video or audio files Smith’s team needed to crack open.
The calendar tells its own story. Smith’s office had indicted Trump in the classified documents case on June 8, 2023, and prosecutors were already barreling toward a second indictment.
On July 12, the office’s Records Officer told Axon to ship overnight. “[w]e are in desperate need of this software,” the official wrote.
Smith’s Own Staff Balked and Then Signed Off Anyway
The next morning, Axon sales representative Christina Zeman emailed that she would help place the order. Minutes later, Smith’s executive officer, Ariel McIntyre, hit the brakes.
“As Jack [Smith] mentioned in our budget briefing, he supports more strict requirements than DOJ’s standard policies,” McIntyre wrote. She added that deviating from the approval process was something “I’m not ok with.”
In another email that morning, McIntyre wrote that she needed “to crack down on our processes” and had “a lot less leeway in the audit now that I have staff.” The records don’t say which audit she meant.
But the tough talk lasted a few hours.
Later that same morning, according to the records, McIntyre authorized the purchase “prior to creating the UFMS obligation,” a reference to the Justice Department’s Unified Financial Management System. Her stated reason was that the card had no link to the finance system “and the purchase is urgent.”
Zeman confirmed the order on July 14. Axon shipped the license dongles on July 15.
And on August 1, 2023, Smith indicted Trump a second time, in heavily Democrat Washington, DC, alleging Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election.
Taxpayers still can’t see what the rush cost them. When Smith’s office asked about pricing, Axon answered, “[w]e do not publish the cost of licenses/software,” and the Justice Department continues to withhold every price as the company’s confidential information.
The paper trail has holes too. The purchase card form the department released lists its justification only as “Investigation software” and shows an empty funding section and blank signature blocks. Staff later wrote that the form “is signed,” but the department never released that version.
Axon’s quote also folded in a data-sharing program covering “sharing of de-identified segments of Agency Content with Axon to develop new products.” The only signature page the department released carries no signature at all.
A Prosecutor Racing the Election Calendar
One software order doesn’t prove a crime, and nobody should pretend it does.
But it does show how Smith’s shop behaved when its strict rules ran into the clock. The rules lost, and they lost in a single morning.
Smith moved at a speed federal prosecutors almost never show. He brought two indictments against the leading Republican candidate for President in under eight weeks. He filed the second one in a city where Trump took roughly 5 percent of the vote in 2020, then pressed for a trial date ahead of the 2024 election. Many conservatives saw the plain purpose: haul Trump into a show trial in Democrat-run Washington, DC, and jail him before voters had their say. And the charges rested on shaky constitutional ground. The US Supreme Court ruled in July 2024 that Presidents hold immunity for official acts, which knocked the legs out from under large parts of Smith’s theory.
Smith has been here before. He ran the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section when prosecutors convicted former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, a Republican, on corruption charges. The Supreme Court threw that conviction out unanimously in 2016. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that,” and the Court still refused to bless the government’s sweeping reading of the bribery statute. A prosecutor who stretches the law to reach a Republican Governor will stretch a purchasing policy to reach a Republican President.
And the dragnet never stopped at Trump. Smith’s team collected phone toll records belonging to Republican lawmakers, a point US Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) raised when Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 29, 2026.
“Jack Smith took partisanship to a new level,” Grassley said.
Smith told the committee a different story. “I made these decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election,” he said in his opening statement.
His office’s own emails sit awkwardly next to that claim. An executive officer cited the boss’s strict standards, then waived them hours later because the purchase couldn’t wait.
Fox News estimated, based on Justice Department reports, that Smith’s investigation likely cost taxpayers more than $50 million. And what did all that money buy? A federal judge threw out the classified documents case. Smith dropped the election case after Trump’s victory in November 2024, then resigned days before the inauguration.
There’s one more detail worth chewing on. Joe Biden reportedly came to regret appointing Garland because the Justice Department didn’t move quickly or aggressively enough against Trump. So the pressure for speed apparently came from the very top, and Smith’s staff seems to have felt it.
The Justice Department still holds the answers. It has the prices, the signed purchase form, and the name of whoever approved the exemption. It also knows which video Smith’s team wanted so badly. But the public has none of it, and 844 pages suggest there’s plenty more where this came from.
Sources:
Breitbart News, “Exclusive: Jack Smith’s Office Bent Its Own Rules to Rush Software Purchase Days Before Indicting Trump,” September 28, 2026
The Oversight Project, “Oversight Project Releases DOJ Records on Jack Smith’s Office Ahead of His Senate Testimony”
CBS News, “Jack Smith defends handling of Trump probes at heated Senate hearing,” September 29, 2026
ABC News, “Ex-special counsel Jack Smith tells Senate panel ‘I stand by’ decisions to charge Trump,” September 29, 2026
Fox News, “History of Jack Smith’s courtroom smackdowns after landmark loss in Trump immunity case”