The Patriot Post® · Jack Smith Abandons Lawfare Against Trump
Democrats waged lawfare against Donald Trump in hopes that Republican primary voters would nominate him so he would lose to either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Then, they could gleefully watch him be marched off to jail in handcuffs. That was the script, anyway, but the American people had other ideas come November.
They sentenced Trump to four more years in the White House. (Buy your sentencing T-shirt here).
After Trump won the election — in no small part because of the Left’s transparent attempt to use the courts as political weapons — Democrats are all but admitting that the lawfare was entirely political. In New York, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan aren’t even pretending. They aim to hold sentencing for the trumped-up “34 felonies” until after Trump leaves the White House in 2029.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has likewise tried to keep alive her case against Trump for trying to “overturn” the state’s election results in 2020. After revelations of her affair with a subordinate and other issues with the case, it has been on hold for months.
Special Counsel Jack Smith doesn’t have the same luxury of foot-dragging.
We argued from the get-go that Smith’s very appointment was constitutionally dubious. No less than the great Clarence Thomas had the same question. So did U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who used Smith’s questionable appointment as justification to toss his classified documents case earlier this year.
But Smith will have you know that he is fastidiously concerned with upholding the Rule of Law. “It has long been the position of the Department of Justice (DOJ) that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President,” Smith wrote in a filing requesting the election case be dropped. “But the Department and the country have never faced the circumstance here, where a federal indictment against a private citizen has been returned by a grand jury and a criminal prosecution is already underway when the defendant is elected President.”
He added, “The [Justice] Department’s position is that the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
By 2029, Trump’s supposed crimes would be well beyond the five-year federal statute of limitations. However, Smith requested dismissal without prejudice, meaning, in theory, the same charges could be brought again unless Trump pardons himself. Trump’s hush-money scheme was also beyond the statute of limitations, and … well, we see how that worked out. Dismissal is also just around the corner for the case regarding classified documents, which Smith had tried to resuscitate before filing Monday to abandon that appeal also.
“The Government has moved to dismiss the Superseding Indictment without prejudice,” wrote U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday in response to Smith’s filing for dismissal. “Defendant does not oppose the Motion … and the court will grant it.”
Smith is admitting defeat only to circumstances, though. The DOJ’s “prohibition is categorical,” he insisted, “and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind.”
Sure thing, Jack.
Trump promised to fire Smith “within two seconds” of taking office, but Smith won’t stick around that long. He aims to resign well before Inauguration Day, albeit after doing as much political damage with reports as he could prior to the election.
A final note as the last federal prosecutor of Trump folds up the circus tents to go home: The various investigations of Robert Mueller, John Durham, and Jack Smith have cost taxpayers a cumulative $90 million. For all that, Democrats are left with nothing but destroyed credibility and the bitter, self-therapeutic lie that this all means Trump “gets away with it.”
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