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Republicans fear special counsel Jack Smith, but this could be another disappointing investigation [1]
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Date: 2023-03-01
On the good side is that Smith has appeared to move quickly and hasn’t hesitated when it comes to subpoenaing big names on Trump’s team, including Mark Meadows and Mike Pence. Smith also seems to move with force when it comes to these big names making the same moves they made in past investigations to wiggle out of appearing by claiming some phrase that ends in the word “privilege.”
There’s no doubt that Trump regards his team as the most privileged people on Earth, and the unwillingness of courts to draw clear lines regarding executive privilege, in particular, have meant that on past occasions just raising this issue has been enough to generate snarls of many months, ultimately leading to whole investigations being over before the issue was resolved. However, Smith has moved to address the issues around both executive and lawyer-client privilege that pervade both Trump’s lies leading up to Jan. 6 and his mishandling of classified materials.
In the case of Pence, that included asking a federal judge to force former Pence to testify while presenting a list of reasons why privilege didn’t apply in this case, and doing it before Pence even made an appeal to privilege.
Already, former Pence assistants Marc Short and Greg Jacob have been forced to testify after claiming privilege. So have Trump attorneys Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin.
Smith is moving aggressively to bring in people at the top of the hierarchy, working to thwart the ploys they used in the past to avoid testimony, and getting them to answer questions in front of the grand jury. That’s all good. It’s probably why Trump has responded like he has in this MSNBC report. At this point, Trump has not only railed against “another witch hunt,” he has also called Smith a: Trump hater of historic proportions, a political hit man, a man who may very well turn out to be a criminal, a mentally deranged thug, a mad dog psycho, and a fully weaponized monster. More than once, Trump has also hinted that he didn’t believe Jack Smith’s name is Jack Smith, though Trump hasn’t said if he thinks Smith is a lizard man or the reincarnation of Fidel Castro.
The kind of agitation Smith is generating for Trump and other Republicans is definitely a good sign. They think that he’s serious. They know they did something (many things) wrong. It’s a combo that makes people sweat.
On the other hand, those who have appeared before Smith’s jury have reported something that at first may seem a good thing: His questions are “very wide-ranging,” touching on every aspect of Trump’s claims about the election and the documents piled in his Mar-a-Lago cart shed.
That might not sound bad, but if Smith was preparing an indictment against Trump, it’s highly likely he would be hitting every possible witness with the same questions, nailing down every aspect of what Trump did in very specific events. Instead, everyone seems to be getting a lot of questions on a lot of topics about a lot of different days.
That could all be deceptive. It’s possible that if someone had all those questions and responses—which we definitely do not—they could be mapped out to reveal that Smith actually is hitting some crucial points, hidden in a flurry of other questions. Right now, all we have are secondhand accounts of a few of those who have sat down in front of attorneys from the special counsel’s office.
However, those “broad questions” descriptions are disturbing. Because while Smith’s charge as special counsel doesn’t actually call on him to indict anyone, it does require that at the end of his investigation, he write up a report. The descriptions so far sound more like a man who wants to write a thorough report than someone nailing down the circumstances around a crime.
The information we have at the moment is very incomplete, so all of this could be dead wrong. Still after six years of watching legal cases come and go, be prepared to be disappointed again.
Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego has thrown his hat into the ring! Gallego will to try to take progressive-turned-bizarre-centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat in 2024. Today on The Brief, Markos and Rep. Gallego talk about the state of the country and his campaign, and what Americans want from the officials they elect to office.
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