Jack Smith Denounces Trump’s ‘Attack on the Rule of Law,’ Speculates That Criminal Indictment ‘Could Happen’

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s declaration that America is facing an attack on the rule of law “that is different in kind and scope to anything I’ve seen in my lifetime,” and that he is “very concerned about what’s going to happen next election” underscores that he hardly expects to fade into the background. The special counsel made those remarks to MS NOW’s Nicole Wallace. A criminal indictment of him by the Department of Justice “could happen,” he told her in his first press appearance since he resigned as special counsel days before President Trump began his second term. Mr. Smith tried to convict Mr. Trump for election interference as well as the storage of documents at Mar-a-Lago.Mr. Smith also told Ms. Wallace that “it angers me” to see public servants “demonized for doing their jobs” and that “one of the problems right today, besides the retribution prosecutions, is that the Justice Department can’t do its job, right?” At a private dinner event in May Mr. Smith declared that “we have a Department of Justice today that targets people for criminal prosecution simply because the president doesn’t like them.”During that dinner event at the Cosmos Club at Washington, D.C., Mr. Smith accused the 47th president of having “corrupted” the DOJ. A spokeswoman for Justice responded in a statement that “I would expect nothing less from Jack Smith.”By “retribution prosecutions” Mr. Smith appeared to be referring to the cases against the former FBI director, James Comey, as well as New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. Mr. Comey has been prosecuted twice. The first case revolved around allegations that Mr. Comey lied to Congress in 2020 about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. That case was dismissed when the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was found to have been unlawfully appointed.Mr. Comey, who like Mr. Smith was a federal prosecutor earlier in his career, now faces charges that an Instagram post featuring a photograph of seashells on a North Carolina beach in a “8647” formation amounted to a threat on the life of Mr. Trump. “86” is slang sometimes used in kitchens and restaurants to refer to throwing out food. Mr. Comey has declared his innocence and his intention to move to dismiss the case post haste. The DOJ has also charged a former federal prosecutor, Carmen Lineberger, of emailing to herself a copy of Mr. Smith’s final report on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. She allegedly disguised the contents of those emails by calling them “Bundt Cake Recipe” and “Chocolate Cake Recipe.” The report itself has been “permanently blocked” from publication by Judge Aileen Cannon. She accused Mr. Smith of a “brazen stratagem” to file his report even after she disqualified him from the case. On Thursday the DOJ filed to Judge Cannon’s docket a “Notice of Inadvertent Discovery Disclosure” — a startling admission that the government mistakenly shared that same sealed report to Ms. Lineberger’s lawyers. Her attorneys “voluntarily ceased review of the discovery material, affirmed they had not examined the documents in question, deleted all discovery materials already downloaded to their server, and cooperated with the government’s efforts to recover the flash drives that same day. The DOJ writes that it “acknowledges the professionalism and candor of defense counsel in remedying this inadvertent inclusion in discovery materials furnished by the Government.” The fate of Mr. Smith’s report, which has been subject to years of litigation, likely hangs on oral arguments scheduled for September 28 before the 11th United States Appeals Circuit, which oversees Judge Cannon.The case for its publication is being pushed by two liberal legal groups, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and American Oversight. The executive director, Jameel Jaffer, of the Knight Institute wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times this week that “Judge Cannon’s order should be vacated and Mr. Smith’s report released” because Congress and the public ought to have “access to the information that would empower them to hold the president accountable.”

Jack Smith Denounces Trump’s ‘Attack on the Rule of Law,’ Speculates That Criminal Indictment ‘Could Happen’

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