Special Counsel Jack Smith, assigned by the Biden administration to prosecute President Donald Trump on a variety of election interference claims, already has seen one of his cases thrown out because the judge determined he wasn’t properly appointed.
He’s trying to get an appeals court to overlook his problematic hiring in that dispute.
But now, in his other case against Trump, where he’s demanded the need for speed throughout, trying to get a trial and conviction before the election, he’s suddenly flipflopped.
Now he wants to slow things down.
This case against Trump claims he engaged in a “criminal scheme” when he pointed out discrepancies and possible problems in the 2020 electoral vote count.
Smith alleges Trump’s pursuit of what he considered electoral checks actually were “fake electors.” And Smith claims Trump demanded “sham election crime investigations” and more.
In fact, that election now is considered tainted because of the $400 million plus Mark Zuckerberg handed to local election officials mostly to recruit Democrat voters – a scheme that multiple states now have outlawed. Further, the FBI interfered in the election by falsely claiming that accurate reporting about Biden family scandals documented in a computer Hunter Biden abandoned were Russian disinformation. A subsequent survey showed that move alone probably cost Trump the election.
Smith has insisted throughout the case, aided by Judge Tanya Chutkan, that things be hurried. He’s opposed any sort of appellate review rights, and shoved the case so quickly that a reasonable record wasn’t even developed on key points.
But now he wants a delay. “The government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States. Although those consultations are well underway, the government has not finalized its position on the most appropriate schedule for the parties to brief issues related to the decision,” he said.
That Supreme Court decision, in fact, said presidents have absolute immunity for some actions in office, and no immunity for others.
The problem is that the lower courts never reviewed that dispute before the Supreme Court got the case, so it returned the fight to lower courts to determine that.
Chutkan immediately jumped into action and set an aggressive hearing schedule, a campaign that Trump’s lawyers have opposed all along. And now Smith is dragging his feet.
A report from constitutional expert Jonathan Turley explains the faceoff.
He explained, “For over a year, Special Counsel Jack Smith has made one element the overriding priority in his prosecution of former president Donald Trump: speed. Smith repeatedly moved to curtail Trump’s appellate rights and demand expedited appeals to try to secure a conviction before the election. In that effort, he found an equally motivated judge in U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who virtually turned her court into a rocket docket to try Trump. Now, in a neck-breaking change of direction, Smith is trying to slow down Chutkan who appears again ready to pull out the stops in this case.”
He said only hours after Chutkan got the case back she was scheduling hearings – now to Smith’s dismay.
He wants a three-week delay to consider what’s next.
Turley pointedly noted that, “It is not clear if the press and pundits will now charge Smith with ‘slow walking’ the case,” as they earlier accused Trump of doing.
“The question is whether Smith is considering a drastic move in light of the calendar and the ruling. There is, of course, always the possibility that he either throws in the towel or opts for a post-election trial. That would certainly go against the grain of Smith, who has always pushed both the law and the calendar to the breaking point. However, as some of us have been arguing for months, he may no longer view a trial as a plausible objective,” Turley said.
“There is also the possibility that Smith will do something that some of us have discussed over the last year: pare down his case. Smith has always been undone by his appetite. As shown in his 8-0 reversal in his conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Smith has rarely shown moderation as a prosecutor.”
He pointed out that Smith’s standard is to “load up” a case with charges, and the result is that the cases then get bogged down in various issues because of that.
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