September 15, 2026 Submitted By Michael Weymouth
Two of the country’s leading legal minds spoke at Hingham’s Old Ship Church on Saturday, September 12, as part of a speaker series underwritten by Hingham’s Mary Anne Tay in memory of her sister, Virginia Tay.
Jack Smith was one of the speakers. Smith, as most Hinghamites will remember, was a special prosecutor appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He was also appointed as a special prosecutor to handle the case involving the mishandling of classified documents by President Trump that were stored at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
The other speaker was Andrew Weissmann, an attorney and college professor at NYU School of Law and a contributor to cable channel MS NOW on legal issues.
Old Ship was packed to the rafters, or at least to maximum capacity, as Smith and Weissmann conducted back-and-forth interviews focused on each of their respective long-time roles as attorneys, beginning in the Southern District of New York.
The discussion quickly moved to present-day legal issues involving the Trump Justice Department and to numerous examples of what the speakers described as weaponized legal actions against Trump opponents, many of which have been in the news lately.
Much of the discussion centered on the firing of public servants within the Justice Department, many of whom, as Jack Smith noted, were “the most highly qualified non-partisan public servants he has ever known, whose only ‘crime’ was loyalty to the rule of law instead of loyalty to President Trump.”
Smith pointed out that many of them had served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. He emphasized that regaining the public’s trust in the independence of the Justice Department should be the goal of whichever political party is in power in the future, a goal that he stated will not be accomplished overnight.
Smith made particular reference to the dismissal of Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll in August 2025 and how unjust, he said, the Trump administration’s efforts to remove him were.
There is a YouTube interview with both Smith and Driscoll on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart that features a discussion about the weaponization of the Justice Department and “examines what happens when these institutions are turned against the principles they were designed to uphold. The segment explores whether today’s DOJ and FBI are capable of holding power accountable, investigates how the assault on the rule of law has been used to punish and intimidate public servants, and considers what it would take to repair these institutions.”
Weissmann is the author of Liar’s Kingdom: How to Stop Trump’s Deceit and Save America, published in May 2026, in which Weissmann argues that political lies and widespread deception are destroying American democracy.
Weissmann also authored Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation, which details his time serving on Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election.
Asked what we can do as citizens to rectify the weaponization of the Justice Department, Jack Smith did not point to a silver bullet. He said that everyone in the audience should try to do “just one little thing” to bring about change, which in and of itself would not turn the tide, but would make us all more invested in the process of restoring democracy to our country.