Donald Trump and his friends have ramped up their assault against the newly appointed special counsel Jack Smith, and they have revived a playbook in the hopes that it can defang the most unprecedented legal threat that is coming down on the former president.
Why this matters: It’s not even close to being 2017 yet. The political and legal conditions that permitted President Trump to escape from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia almost unharmed are no longer applicable. If Smith finds that he has sufficient evidence, Trump will be indicted regardless of how much mud he throws around or how many times he says he “won’t participate” in the inquiry.
Andrew Weissman, a former top prosecutor for the Mueller investigation, said in a tweet that “Steve Bannon portrayed me as a pit dog.” “Thanks to Jack Smith, I have the appearance of a young golden retriever.”
“It looks like Jack Smith is coming after me. If he goes after Donald Trump with the same persistent zeal, Trump is going to find himself in a lot of trouble “In a blog for The Intercept, journalist James Risen detailed Smith’s role in a CIA leak prosecution. Smith was the subject of the investigation.
Driving the news: Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill and in conservative media have already accused Smith, who is still working remotely from Europe, where he was a war-crimes prosecutor at The Hague, of having a political bias, citing his wife’s donations to Democrats. Smith is still working remotely from Europe, where he was a war-crimes prosecutor at The Hague.
Garland appointed Smith to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest after Trump declared his candidacy for the presidency in 2024, but that hasn’t stopped some Republicans from accusing the registered independent of being a covert liberal. Garland appointed Smith to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest after Trump declared his candidacy for the presidency in 2024.
Reps. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Elise Stefanik (R-New York), and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) are among those who have attempted to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment by characterizing it as the most recent instance of “politicization” at the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the administration of President Biden.
Smith, a senior federal prosecutor who is held in high regard, was selected by Attorney General Merrick Garland to assume charge of two of the most explosive investigations against a former president in recent history.
The first is the comprehensive investigation that the Department of Justice is doing into President Trump’s efforts to obstruct the constitutional handover of power following the election in 2020. This includes the plan to certify fraudulent slates of electors on January 6, 2021.
The second investigation is looking into whether or not Trump broke the law by keeping sensitive materials at his Mar-a-Lago club and thwarted the attempts of the government to retrieve them.
In between the lines, there are at least three main variables that differentiate the newly appointed special counsel from the obstacles and limits of the Mueller investigation:
Protection: Since President Trump is no longer in office, the policy of the Justice Department that prevented Special Counsel Robert Mueller from indicting a sitting president does not apply to the investigation any longer. The strategies that President Trump employed to undermine and obstruct the investigation, such as dangling the possibility of pardons, threatening to remove DOJ employees, and using his bully pulpit, are no longer available to him. Nor is his loyalist Attorney General Bill Barr, who softened the effect of the final Mueller report by publishing a summary of it before making it public. Both of these individuals are not acting in the best interests of the United States.
Regarding the timing of events, both Garland and Smith have emphasized that the appointment will not cause either inquiry to move at a more leisurely pace. In contrast to Mueller, who had to “fly and build the plane simultaneously,” as Weissman noted in a recent editorial for the New York Times, Smith will inherit teams of prosecutors and agents that have already made significant progress in the investigation.
The vast scope of the investigation led by Robert Mueller included both criminal and counterintelligence components, with most of the pertinent information being hidden deep within the infrastructure of an adversarial foreign power. In contrast, the case regarding the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is considered by many legal experts to be a clear-cut win for the prosecution. The House committee investigating the events of January 6 has already uncovered massive amounts of evidence that are anticipated to be sent to the DOJ.
The ultimate line is that the glorification of Mueller by liberals online has resulted in disappointment and has contributed to Trump’s reputation for invulnerability.
Both Smith and Mueller have human limitations. However, the only significant similarity between the cases handled by the two special counsels is that they both bear the same name.
In 2010, Smith responded to criticism that he had closed corruption cases involving members of Congress by telling the New York Times that “[i]f I were the sort of person who could be cowed — ‘I know we should bring this case, I know the person did it, but we could lose, and that will look bad,’ I would find another line of work.”