How Global Turmoil Is Reshaping Australian Politics in 2026

Former Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith reportedly has told people close to him that he is not intimidated by the Trump DOJ’s reported investigation into his activities and is looking forward to presenting the public case he made against now-President Donald Trump.“Mr. Smith, the special counsel who twice indicted Mr. Trump, appears unintimidated by the president’s demand that Republican lawmakers investigate him and that the Justice Department put him in prison for as-yet unproved and unspecified crimes,” The New York Times reported on Monday. Smith, in an early October interview with fellow former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, said: “The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case, or who got chosen, is ludicrous.”“Smith also said that he had ‘tons of evidence’ that Mr. Trump had willingly retained the classified documents at his residence in Mar-a-Lago and tried ‘to obstruct the investigation.’”According to those in his “orbit,” Smith is looking forward to presenting the evidence against Trump from the two cases that were scuttled by the U. S. Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and that of a highly controversial federal judge’s decision“Mr. Smith, who spent more than two years aggressively collecting evidence to prove Mr. Trump mishandled classified documents and tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, appears eager to publicly challenge a foundational pillar of MAGA canon: that the president was a sinned-upon innocent who did nothing to deserve scrutiny, much less two prosecutions,” according to the Times, which notes that Smith now sits atop Trump’s “prosecutorial hit list,” along with former Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. Smith had been prosecuting Trump on two separate fronts. The so-called classified documents case and the 2020 election interference case. Last week, President Trump alleged on social media that “Documents show conclusively that Christopher Wray, Deranged Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, and other crooked lowlifes from the failed Biden Administration, signed off on Operation Arctic Frost.”“They spied on Senators and Congressmen/women, and even taped their calls. They cheated and rigged the 2020 Presidential Election. These Radical Left Lunatics should be prosecuted for their illegal and highly unethical behavior!” Trump claimed. Also last week, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee urged their Republican chairman, Chuck Grassley, to call on Smith to testify publicly.