Vice President Harris’s bid for the Democratic nomination for president comes as Special Counsel Jack Smith’s cases against President Trump have become shipwrecked in South Florida and the District of Columbia. 

Ms. Harris and Mr. Smith are both prosecutors who aim to make the case against the 45th president. Trump, though, is not their first foe in a court of law — or the court of public opinion. The Californian, before acceding to the Senate, served as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California. 

Mr. Smith came up through the Department of Justice, but he was appointed by Attorney General Garland while prosecuting war crimes at the Hague. That trajectory has proven problematic, as Judge Aileen Cannon last week ruled that the special counsel’s appointment was unconstitutional. She also dismisses the 40 charges he handed up against Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case. 

The special counsel has filed his notice of appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Trump’s legal team misstepped last week, when the riders registered a “Notice of deficient Appearance of Counsel filed by Emil Bove for Donald J. Trump.” They explained that “an attorney may not electronically file through another person’s ECF [electronic court filing] account.” That error was rectified, but the 11th Circuit has reversed Judge Cannon before, and could do so again.

Judge Cannon found Mr. Smith to be “a private citizen exercising the full power of a United States Attorney, and with very little oversight or supervision.” She also determined that someone wielding the kind of power he was given by General Garland needs to be confirmed by the Senate or act under congressional law. She ruled that Mr. Smith possessed neither source of authority.

As Mr. Smith labors to get Trump before a jury — the special counsel’s January 6 case has been upended by the Supreme Court’s immunity decision — Ms. Harris and her allies are casting her as a prosecutor who is prepared to be president. After President Biden stepped aside, Senator Warren declared that “as a former prosecutor, Vice President Harris has a lot of experience holding convicted felons accountable.” 

The president, Mini Timmaraju, of an abortion rights group, Reproductive Freedom for All, tells CNN that Ms. Harris’s prosecutorial background is a “beautiful juxtaposition” with Trump’s criminal record, and declares that Ms. Harris “has the chance to put the ultimate bad guy away for good.” The vice president also tells CNN that the “prosecutor approach is really just about deconstructing an issue.”

One of Ms. Harris’s advertisements from her abandoned presidential run in 2020 featured this line with respect to Trump — “she prosecuted sex predators. He is one.” On the stump, the vice president often refers to herself as “a former federal prosecutor.” Her time securing convictions, though, has occasioned criticism from the left wing of the Democratic Party. In 2020, she tweeted out support for a cash bail operation in Minnesota for Black Lives Matter protesters.

Ms. Harris’s past as a state attorney general will likely be less important than the one she will name if she beats Trump at the ballot box in November. That’s where the future of Mr. Smith’s prosecutions will be decided. Even if the special counsel secures a reversal from the 11th Circuit, a Trump restoration at the White House presents multiple avenues, like a self-pardon or a pink slip for Mr. Smith, for the cases to expire. 

If the vice president pulls out a win in November, though, the eulogies written for Mr. Smith’s prosecutions could yet be proven premature. Under the protection of a Democratic attorney general, Mr. Smith would have another four years to pursue Trump through the tiers of appeals, and even back to the Supreme Court — one potentially reshaped by a future President Harris.