Special Counsel Jack Smith’s spouse is a filmmaker who is also a Joe Biden donor. His family includes a daughter and parents who raised him in upstate New York.
Smith’s wife’s name is Katy Chevigny. Chevigny donated to President Biden’s campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission. Chevigny also made multiple small donations to the Democratic platform ActBlue and made a donation to MoveOn.org’s PAC, the FEC reecords show. Her mother, Bell Gale Chevigny was a professor, writer, and George Soros senior justice fellow, according to Prison Legal News.
A career prosecutor, Smith was named special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump by Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland, and he has filed two sets of charges against the former president.
Smith’s full name is John Luman Smith. He also goes by Jack Luman Smith and John L. Smith.
Here’s what you need to know about Jack Smith’s family:
1. Jack Smith’s Wife Katy Chevigny Helped Create a Documentary About Former First Lady Michelle Obama
GettyKaty Chevigny, Jack Smith’s wife.
Smith’s wife helped create a documentary on Michelle Obama.
Her IMDb profile says, “Katy Chevigny is known for Becoming (2020).”
The website for Big Mouth Productions says of Chevigny:
Katy Chevigny is an award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of Big Mouth Productions. She has produced and/or directed over a dozen documentary features. Most recently, she produced the Netflix Original documentaries BECOMING, about former First Lady Michelle Obama (dir. Nadia Hallgren) which was nominated for four Primetime Emmy® awards, and DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD (dir. Kirsten Johnson) which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Award for Innovation in Non-fiction Storytelling, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and later earned a Primetime Emmy®. Katy also produced DARK MONEY (dir. Kimberly Reed), which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and CHARM CITY, which premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival.
Both DARK MONEY and CHARM CITY were shortlisted for the 2019 Academy Awards® – Best Documentary Feature. Katy also co-directed (with Ross Kauffman) the documentary E-TEAM, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, won several festival awards around the world, was nominated for two Emmy® Awards and was acquired as a Netflix Original. She also directed one of the storylines in Kartemquin Films’ documentary series HARD EARNED — winner of a 2016 Alfred I. DuPont Award.
Previously, Katie directed ELECTION DAY which premiered at SXSW and was broadcast on POV in 2008. She also co-directed (with Kirsten Jonson) DEADLINE, which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, won the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award, and, in an unusual acquisition, was broadcast as a primetime special on NBC. Her work has won multiple awards, been shown on networks including Netflix, PBS, NBC, HBO, Netflix, Arte/ZDF and has played in theaters and at festivals around the world. In 2018, Katy (together with Marilyn Ness and Big Mouth Productions) was honored with the Sundance Institute / Amazon Studios Producers Award.
According to The Chicago Tribune, the movie “Deadline,” which Chevigny also helped create, is “about former Illinois Gov. George Ryan deciding what to do with the state’s death penalty.”
According to Deadline, Chevigny also helped produce a film called “Dark Money,” describing it as a movie that “follows a Montana-based reporter’s investigation of one of the greatest present threats to American democracy—the influence of corrupt money on our elected officials. A century ago, secret money swamped Montana’s legislature, but citizens rose up to prohibit corporate campaign contributions.”
2. Jack Smith Married Katy Chevigny on the Banks of the St. Lawrence River in 2011
GettyDirectors Katy Chevigny (L) and Ross Kauffman pose for a portrait during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
An archived version of a Harvard Law bulletin contains some details of the couple’s marriage.
“On July 23, Jack Smith and Katy Chevigny were married on the banks of the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York by the Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis. Smith is serving as the chief of the public integrity section of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., where the couple lives,” it reads.
Smith married Chevigny in 2011, according to The New York Post.
3. Jack Smith & Katy Chevigny Have a Daughter Together
GettyJack Smith.
Jack Smith has one child, a daughter. Heavy is not naming her to preserve her privacy (his wife’s name has been widely reported.)
According to the Nashville Aquatic Club, Smith told the site: “My favorite part of my day is hanging out with my wife and daughter at the end of the day. I start my day with a bike, run or swim before the family gets up as it sets my head right for the day to come.”
Syracuse.com reported in 2022, “Smith, 54, is married to Katy Chevigny, a documentary film maker. The couple has a daughter, and has been living in the Netherlands since 2018. He is currently working from there because he is recovering from a cycling injury.”
4. Jack Smith, Who Grew Up in Upstate New York, Described His Parents as People Who ‘Pay Their Taxes, Follow the Rules’
Yearbook photoJack Smith in High School
Smith spoke about his parents to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“Smith sees his job as serving people like his parents and the values they instilled as he grew up in the upstate New York town of Clay: ‘They pay their taxes, follow the rules and they expect their public officials to do the same,'” he told the newspaper in 2010.
Smith’s high school yearbook shows he played football and baseball. According to Eagle News Online, Smith graduated from Liverpool High School in Liverpool, New York.
According to Syracuse.com, which reported that he graduated from high school in 1987, “Smith was a tall, skinny kid who sat on the bench more than he played. But he was there for every practice, and he wasn’t someone who sulked about not getting much time on the field.”
Smith’s parents were not named in that article.
5. Jack Smith’s Mother-in-Law Bell Gale Chevigny Was a Professor & Writer Who Pioneered Courses in Women’s Studies
Smith’s mother in law was Bell Gale Chevigny. According to her 2021 obituary, Chevigny was a professor and writer who “pioneered courses” in Women’s Studies and African-American literature. The obituary says:
During her long career as a professor and writer, she taught at Queens College, Sarah Lawrence and SUNY Purchase. A beloved and devoted teacher, she pioneered courses in such disciplines as Women’s Studies, African American Literature and Latin American Literature. It was thanks to Bell’s efforts that many distinguished authors from Cuba, Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America came to the U.S. to share their work. Bell published several books, notably The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller’s Life and Writings (1976), a biography of Fuller, a previously unrecognized early feminist and thinker in the Trancendentalist movement, and an anthology of prison writing titled Doing Time: Prison Writing in America (1999). For several years, she chaired the Prison Writing Program at PEN America. Throughout her life, she taught in prisons, championed the cause of prisoner education, and promoted the recognition of prison writers. Bell spent summers at a family cabin on the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York. She painted numerous canvases of the landscape and helped launch a plein air painting festival there.
According to Prison Legal News, “With the support of a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship, she compiled Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing, a PEN American Center Prize anthology. She has written extensively about writers in prison and their literary works.”
Katy Chevigny’s father Paul Chevigny is a law professor who focuses on issues relating to the criminal justice system and “police violence” or abuse, according to his CV.
READ NEXT: More on Prosecutor Jack Smith’s Background.