Special counsel Jack Smith has just given Republicans another reason to believe that his prosecution of former President Donald Trump is motivated by politics, not a legitimate pursuit of justice for alleged crimes.

According to Politico, Smith just brought on Alex Whiting, whom he worked with in the The Hague in the late 1990s prosecuting war crimes.

“Whiting has been a frequent commentator on the previous special counsel to investigate Trump: Robert Mueller, who investigated links between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. Whiting wrote numerous articles and gave interviews assessing the strength of Mueller’s case against Trump, often siding with those who saw extreme legal peril for Trump over his efforts to curb the investigation. Though he was once active on Twitter, his account appears to have been deleted and a Wayback Machine search suggests it was dormant since mid-2022,” Politico noted.

What the left-leaning outlet failed to mention, however, is Whiting’s history of donating to Democratic politicians.

“According to Open Secrets, he has donated thousands to Democrats over the years, including to extreme leftists such as Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama,” The Western Journal reported.

This guy– Alex Whiting– is a DEMOCRAT donor. Here’s just a sample of his political donations… https://t.co/82I6eJWeEd pic.twitter.com/4YIbzkT92u

— Steven Cheung (@TheStevenCheung) September 22, 2023

The addition of an ally, friend, and Democrat supporter comes as Smith suffered a major setback in recent days.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled last week that Smith cannot have access to the phone records of Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) because allowing him to obtain the information amounts to a breach of the GOP lawmaker’s immunity under the Constitution’s “speech and debate” clause.

Smith was seeking Perry’s communications with colleagues and Executive Branch officials, Politico reported. However, the clause in question shields members of Congress from being slapped with legal proceedings while they are engaging in their elected official duties.

“While elections are political events, a member’s deliberation about whether to certify a presidential election or how to assess information relevant to legislation about federal election procedures are textbook legislative acts,” U.S. District Judge Neomi Rao wrote in the opinion issued last week.

Newsmax noted further:

The decision marked the the first time an appeals court has held that lawmakers’ cellphones are subject to the same protections as their physical offices.

It also was the first significant legal setback for Smith in his bid to obtain evidence about involvement by allies of Donald Trump in the then-president’s alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election, Politico reported.

Rao, a Trump appointee, was joined by another Trump appointee, Judge Gregory Katsas, and by Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush.

The three-judge panel’s ruling overturns a lower court decision by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who mostly sided with the government’s request to gain access to Perry’s cellphone data.

The appeals court sent the case back to Howell’s court and instructed her to apply the new ruling to any future decision in the case, according to the outlets.

Meanwhile, Fox News host Jesse Watters tore into Smith for indicting former President Donald Trump in two separate cases.

During a recent segment on “The Five,” Watters called Smith a “nervous wreck” after he unsealed Trump’s grand jury indictment while reminding viewers of Smith’s troubled legal history before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Smith had just obtained a four-count indictment against Trump concerning his actions to challenge the outcome of the 2020 election. They include willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and false statements.

“That was Special Counsel Jack Smith, who looked like a bedraggled nervous wreck, dripping with anger and highly emotional,” Watters said after showing a clip of Smith’s press conference earlier in the day announcing the new charges.

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“The last time Jack Smith charged a politician, the case was so weak, it got tossed out of the Supreme Court unanimously. The Biden Justice Department is using obscure federal statutes to put a former president in prison for the rest of his life,” Watters told viewers.

Watters was referring to a case where Smith prosecuted then-Republican Gov. Bob McDowell of Virginia over receiving gifts, securing a conviction that the Supreme Court unanimously threw out.

“These charges are not bribery, not assault, not tax evasion, not sex trafficking. They’re charging Donald Trump under the Act of 1866,” Watters said. “It was used against the [Ku Klux] Klan, and now they are using it against Trump.”