Jack Smith: The Democrats' Anti-Trump Weapon

Political Prosecutions Are Still Persecution

Nearly a month after Special Counsel Jack Smith formally indicted Donald Trump for illegally retaining classified documents after he left the White House in 2021 comes the news that his grand jury is still subpoenaing witnesses.

In recent days, the grand jury has issued subpoenas to a handful of people who are connected to the inquiry, those familiar with it said. While it remains unclear who received the subpoenas and the kind of information prosecutors were seeking to obtain, it is clear that the grand jury has stayed active and that investigators are digging even after a 38-count indictment was issued this month against Mr. Trump and a co-defendant, Walt Nauta, one of his personal aides.

Prosecutors often continue investigating strands of a criminal case after charges have been brought, and sometimes their efforts go nowhere. But post-indictment investigations can result in additional charges against people who have already been accused of crimes in the case. The investigations can also be used to bring charges against new defendants.

Why is Smith still investigating? Trump by definition is the top of the food chain on any collusive effort by Trump and his various staffers to presumably illegally retain and even share certain notional national “secrets”. He’s already had 38 charges placed against him. What is there to be gained by adding more charges for more documents and more presumed compromises of “national security”?

The likely answer is simple: keep Donald Trump off-balance (and, if possible, off the ballot) come next year’s elections.

The strategy being presented against Donald Trump is simple: use the criminal justice system to neutralize him so that Democrats do not have to contend with him in the political system.

Why else would Georgia prosecutors be inviting a rehash of the 2020 election by seeking indictments against Donald Trump for daring to challenge the results of the 2020 election?

The ex-president and the ex-New York City mayor are also understood to be among the numerous targets in a state-level investigation in Georgia focusing on Mr Trump’s efforts to pressure Peach State officials to unlawfully overturn Mr Biden’s shock victory there.

That probe, which is being conducted by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, is expected to result in multiple indictments which could be unveiled as early as next month. Ms Willis, who last year oversaw a special purpose grand jury probe into efforts by Mr Trump and his allies to reverse his loss to Mr Biden in Georgia, is reportedly considering indictments against the ex-president, his former attorney, top Republican figures in the state, as well as Mr Trump’s final White House chief of staff, ex-North Carolina congressman Mark Meadows.

For the sake of brevity, I will not here delve into the many allegations of ballot and voting fraud that have been made in multiple states, including Georgia. Suffice to say, those allegations have been made, and there are certainly those portions of the electorate who believe the proof of fraud is overwhelming and damning against the Democrats.

What is relevant is that if a credible case for vote fraud exists, in Georgia or elsewhere, then Donald Trump would have a built-in affirmative defense against such charges, and a trial over the matter would give him a platform for airing those fraud allegations. If the results of the ballotting in Georgia were tainted by fraud, then the certification of the election and the selection of Presidential electors by Georgia is automatically improper—as it would be in any state where vote and ballot fraud could be proven. Without 270 electors voting for Dementia Joe, the election of the President automatically goes to the House of Representatives per the Constitution. This would have been entirely legal, Constitutional, and on the up-and-up.

However, with an ongoing federal investigation, the Georgia probe (and potential indictments) become an afterthought. They would be sidelined in the public eye just as was the case with the New York fraud indictments earlier this year.

The Trump Circus Moves To The Federal Tent

We must also bear in mind that Donald Trump is first and foremost being tried in the Court of Public Opinion. The prosecution wants to see the media filled with commentary such as this letter to the editor in a California newspaper:

Trump publicly and repeatedly confirmed that he intentionally took classified documents containing highly classified materials with grave national security implications. He touted them around to unauthorized people at his private residence, and then he tried to prevent law enforcement from getting back what he stole. These crimes are too serious to be ignored.Trump publicly and repeatedly confirmed that he intentionally took classified documents containing highly classified materials with grave national security implications. He touted them around to unauthorized people at his private residence, and then he tried to prevent law enforcement from getting back what he stole. These crimes are too serious to be ignored.

According to this narrative, charging Trump is the praiseworthy defense of the rule of law.

As I have already stated on Substack Notes, charging Donald Trump under the Espionage Act is anything but “the rule of law.”

The reality that these presumed mishandlings of “classified” documents routinely continue for years before there is even the beginnings of an investigation, let alone a prosecution, is by itself sufficient to render the claim that this is all about “the rule of law” demonstrably absurd.

National Security? Seriously?

Moreover, both the media and the prosecution are guilty of a fundamental hypocrisy, as the prosecution has already begun leaking evidence to the media, in what can only be viewed as a means of smearing Donald Trump before trial.

CNN has exclusively obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where President Donald Trump discusses holding secret documents he did not declassify.

The recording, which first aired on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” includes new details from the conversation that is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information, including a moment when Trump seems to indicate he was holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran.

This is happening at the same time that Donald Trump is being put under court order not to discuss the evidence publicly.

US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who signed off last August on the search warrant for the 77-year-old’s Mar-a-Lago resort, sided with the Justice Department on Monday after special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors filed a motion to keep the evidence in the case secured during the discovery process.

The judge said Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta cannot “disclose the Discovery Materials or their contents directly or indirectly to any person or entity other than persons employed to assist in the defense, persons who are interviewed as potential witnesses, counsel for potential witnesses, and other persons to whom the Court may authorize disclosure.

Donald Trump may not release or disclose evidence, yet CNN receives a “leaked” audio recording which we are told is a “crucial” piece of evidence against Donald Trump.

One does not even need to consider the merits of the Sixth or the Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution to see the grotesque injustice being perpetrated here: Donald Trump faces legal sanction for disclosing evidence to sway public opinion, but Jack Smith does not.

Moreover, Donald Trump is being ordered not to have contact with his co-defendant Walter Nauta, a gag order some legal analysts claim is “impossible” to enforce.

A judge on Tuesday barred Donald Trump from talking about his classified documents case with co-defendant and personal valet Walt Nauta – and potentially dozens of witnesses in the first-ever federal prosecution of a former president.

Trump agreed to the order by magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman as a condition of his release from custody on his own recognizance during the hushed hearing on the 13th floor of the federal courthouse here. It was a step down from an even stricter proposed ban – a first win for Trump but also a significant victory for special counsel Jack Smith.

It's a compromise, legal analysts said, that will be all but impossible to enforce.

If it cannot be enforced then it should not have been issued—unless its purpose is to entrap Donald Trump into a contempt citation that could result in his incarceration pending trial.

Nor is that order the only attempt Jack Smith has made to deprive Donald Trump of his public soapbox.

After the initial instruction forbidding Trump from contacting witnesses was issued, the prosecution attempted to further restrict Donald Trump from speaking about the case at all.

Trump has been charged with mishandling classified documents. When he was arraigned on the charges, he was instructed not to contact witnesses in the case or discuss the case with his co-defendant, longtime aide Walt Nauta.

Last week, prosecutors filed a request that the witness list be kept secret and that Trump sign a document saying he understood those on it could not be contacted.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon rejected the request.

“The Government’s Motion does not explain why filing the list with the Court is necessary; it does not offer a particularized basis to justify sealing the list from public view; it does not explain why partial sealing, redaction, or means other than sealing are unavailable or unsatisfactory; and it does not specify the duration of any proposed seal,” Cannon wrote, according to Insider.

While Judge Cannon was unimpressed with the prosecution’s manuevering, the implication is clear: Jack Smith wants Donald Trump muzzled, while the prosecution remains free to selectively leak bits and pieces of the “evidence” against Donald Trump to the media. This is the inevitable conclusion to be drawn because we have already witnessed one such leak to CNN. It would be naive in the extreme not to expect more such leaks.

Given Donald Trump’s high public profile, it is equally naive to presume that prospective jurors will not see the media coverage of such leaks. The obvious inference to be drawn is that Jack Smith is attempting to influence potential jurors—which would be a blatant violation of Donald Trump’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial before an impartial jury of his peers.

All of which explains the logic of Jack Smith continuing to investigate and use the grand jury process to subpoena additional witnesses. By constructing new charges, Jack Smith also constructs the means to continue this prosecution potentially beyond the 2024 election.

In the perfect scenario for Democrats, the prosecution results in Donald Trump not being allowed on the ballot in at least several states, thus preventing him from securing victory come next November.

Even in the imperfect scenario, Jack Smith can at least keep enough prosecutions ongoing against Trump so as to make him unappealing and unelectable to moderate and independent voters outside of his base.

As a political strategy for neutralizing Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 elections, it is not a bad strategy. It might even prove successful.

However, such a strategy is not in the slightest degree compatible with any notion of equality under the law, or the right of everyone within the US to enjoy the equal protection of the laws. As stated in the Fourteenth Amendment, the equal protection of the laws guarantee means that no one citizen receives better or worse treatment either by the courts or by the executive branch of government. At every level of government, each person is to be treated largely the same by the courts and the police agencies.

That is not what is happening here. The courts are being asked to silence Donald Trump while the prosecution operates under no such restriction. For the most part, a supine and compliant corporate media is more than a little happy to go along with the idea.

Yet regardless of how impactful such tactics may or may not be in the wild political theater that Presidential elections have become in this country, the criminal justice system has no role to play in determing who will win. Criminal charges involving unconstitutional laws (or even constitutional ones) are not supposed to be a weapon of political combat. That is not what the “rule of law” is, and that is not how “the rule of law” works.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is proving to be the Democrats’ ultimate anti-Trump weapon. His mission is to stop Trump before he can be elected President again, and Devil damn the cost to democracy or the rule of law.