Former special prosecutor Jack Smith opened a law firm with attorneys who worked on Jan. 6 cases, his first major career move after stepping down as special counsel.
Heaphy, Smith, Harbach, & Windom, as the firm is called, will focus on investigations and white-collar crime. Despite the reputation of the founders for being liberal heavyweights, with Smith at the center of one of the most polarizing prosecutions in modern U.S. history, they say they aren’t looking to continue down that route.
“This will be potentially perceived in the market as an anti-Trump effort, given that all of us have worked on investigations of the current president,” co-founder Tim Heaphy told Bloomberg Law. “But that isn’t the animating principle of the firm.”
While the focus of the firm won’t be on Trump or defending liberal causes, the firm indicated it had no problem vigorously defending itself and other clients from Trump’s wrath.
“The law firms that have resisted efforts to take security clearances or take other actions have largely been successful,” Heaphy said. “If that happens to us, we’ll be prepared to defend ourselves just as we vigorously defend our clients, and I think we’d have a lot of allies in that.”
“We have all been through very difficult circumstances as part of our investigations,” he continued. “We look forward to applying experience and the principles that we’ve developed over the course of our careers, not just in government, but at private law firms.”
Smith became one of the most well-known U.S. lawyers in 2023 when he was assigned by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate President Donald Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 election and mishandling of classified information. The investigations were dropped after Trump took office.
Windom helped lead Smith’s special counsel team investigating Trump’s alleged election interference, Harbach prosecuted the mishandled classified documents case, and Heaphy was the chief investigative counsel to the House Democrat-led Jan. 6 Committee.
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Outside of coordinating high-level liberal talent in a single law firm, the creation could also be a matter of poor job prospects elsewhere, as attorney hiring has been clogged up due to Trump’s DOJ shakedown.
“I never got the cold shoulder from any firm because of my work,” Harbach said. “However, it may have been a factor in the relative difficulty of getting on at a law firm compared to when I got back from the Hague,” where he was working with Smith, Harbach said.
