Dem
47
GOP
53
There have been a couple of developments on the Jack Smith front in the last week or so. First, in the be-careful-what-you-wish-for department, the House Judiciary Committee, led by noted intellectual heavyweight and former assistant college wrestling coach Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), has demanded that Smith appear before them in a closed-door session. Smith has responded by saying that he will happily appear so long as the hearings are public and that he is given access to all his files, including Volume 2 of his report, which has yet to be released. The committee has yet to counter.
Meanwhile, some Senate Republicans, not to be outdone, are saying they would welcome a public hearing. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) has even called for "Watergate-style hearings on this for months." For the last couple of months, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has been selectively releasing information from Smith's investigation in a way to try to cast things in as sinister a light as possible. For example, Smith's routine subpoena for phone records to see call logs on January 6, 2021, which was granted by a judge, and which has been known for 2 years since the logs were released, is being rehashed and falsely referred to as "wire-tapping." The subpoena was issued after Republican members of Congress themselves revealed that Donald Trump and/or Mark Meadows had called them to pressure them to stop the certification process both during and after the Capitol attack. The call logs only show incoming and outgoing numbers, not any content, and it was obviously after-the-fact, so there was no surveillance of any kind.
The advantage of Grassley's approach, from the vantage point of the MAGA Republicans, is that they control the flow of information. The downside is the slow drip-drip of information provided by FBI director Kash Patel to only the Republicans, and then slanted to favor Trump, is so ham-fisted and obviously partisan as to only serve to rile up the base. And maybe that's the only goal. But if the goal is to somehow take down Jack Smith, that won't do it. And if they subpoena him and insist on a private hearing, they won't get anything except a bunch of responses like "I can't recall—I need to see my files to refresh my recollection, especially Volume 2 of the report that you are hiding for some reason."
So, Republicans may have to give Smith a public hearing. At that point, Katy bar the door. Smith was never able to get Trump in a courtroom, of course. A public hearing may be the closest he'll get, and you can bet he will take full advantage of that opportunity. He has the chance to make an opening and a closing statement, during which he can lay out all the evidence he has compiled over the course of his years-long investigation. He will turn every grandstanding question by Republican senators into a way to get another piece of evidence in front of the public. He will discuss the troves of classified documents they discovered when executing a lawful search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, a search that the FBI scheduled with Trump's team, a courtesy that Trump used to try to hide or destroy evidence, including "accidentally" flooding the room where the security footage was stored—footage that showed Trump's underlings moving boxes around and off the property. (Readers may recall that John Bolton was not provided this preferential treatment. The raid on his home was a true raid—occurring without notice, and in the wee hours.)
Smith is savvy enough to know that he has to be strategic about his public appearances and what he chooses to discuss about his investigation. But in a formal hearing that he is required to attend and that is already set up as a Republican political stunt, the brakes can come off and he can defend himself and his staff, correct all the various misstatements and falsehoods, and go on the offense to try Trump in absentia in the court of public opinion. It would be quite a hearing. Our prediction is the Republicans with half a brain who are left in Congress (granted, that number continues to dwindle) will wise up before he gets that chance.
In other Smith news, former prosecutors on his team who were summarily fired are setting up their own shop. This brings to mind that old adage: Would you rather have your critics inside the tent pissing out or outside the tent pissing in? Trump and his merry band have clearly chosen the latter. We are already seeing that backfire, as Comey and New York AG Letitia James (more below) run circles around the DOJ "attorneys" in court, since they now have a crack team of defense attorneys who Trump fired either in the first go-round or the second.
Molly Gaston and J.P. Cooney are two senior prosecutors who worked in the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ.
"Attorney General" Pam Bondi and Trump's former personal attorney, Todd Blanche, currently playing the part of the
Deputy Attorney General, have gutted this division because they don't want any more of their friends getting popped for
corruption. Trump needs those bribes gifts from donors to keep flowing, and he knows it doesn't matter that a law
is on the books if there's no one around to enforce it. The purge has left a public integrity section that used to have
dozens of staff with only two full-time attorneys who are now mostly assigned immigration work. This sends yet another
clear and unmistakable message that this administration conveys on favors and cronyism and corruption: It's all good, as
long as it benefits Trump.
Well, enter Gaston and Cooney, who are going to pursue those cases that are ignored by Bondi and company. They served on Smith's team and are "among the most accomplished corruption prosecutors in the Justice Department." Because of the abdication of these duties by the federal government, their goal is to assist state and local governments to investigate corruption to fill that void. While most public officials take their duties seriously and abide by their oaths of office, when a culture is created that rewards favoritism and encourages corrupt behavior, the incentive for anyone to play by the rules is eroded. These two are willing to put themselves out there to keep fighting for the rule of law however they can and be a major pain in the backside to Trump and friends. Yet another encouraging source of resistance to this regime. And they are also fighting their dismissals as unlawful—without cause or due process—and have filed complaints with the Merit Systems Protection Board. (L)