Jack Smith Goes (Back) To Washington

And he had some STUFF TO SAY.

In case you missed it, at around 2 p.m. on Wednesday — you know, the day before New Year’s Eve, and after most reporters had already left the office, at least mentally — the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released video of Special Prosecutor John Luman “Jack” Smith’s eight-plus hours of closed-door testimony about his investigation of Donald Trump, from December 17. And it was ass-scorching damning to Trump. It quickly became quite clear why Jim Jordan did not want Smith’s testimony public, and timed its release in the hope that when stories came out everyone would be too drunk to read them, and it would have become old news by the time everyone had recovered from their hangovers.

But like ones about a child-rape-cabal of shadowy elites, stories about the felon president’s crimes never expire!

Video of Smith’s whole testimony is below; here is a link to the 255-page transcript, or let’s just pull the most notable parts!

First your reminder, Smith’s testimony is something that Jim Jordan himself asked for:

Chairman Jordan has requested this deposition as part of the committee’s oversight of the Biden-Harris administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department and its misuse of Federal law enforcement resources for partisan political purposes.

But derp, it did not go the way Jordan had hoped! In spite of desperate entreaties to get Jack Smith to say that Joe Biden made him investigate poor innocent sweet baby lamb Trump and do wiretapps on Josh Hawley and other Republican congresspeople, Smith pushed back at every step.

“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts.”

And,

“If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat. Recent narratives about my team’s work are false and misleading, including stories about our collection of toll records.”

By “toll records” he means the phone calls made to and by members of Congress, which Republicans have been heaving were wiretaps but were not. Why did Smith have a record of some Republican congresspeople’s calls? Because Trump was the one who kept calling them!

“President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election. I did not choose those Members, President Trump did.”

Somewhere around there is probably where Jim Jordan started to realize he’d made a terrible mistake.

Q: You just made some pretty definitive statements about your belief that President Trump was guilty of these charges. Is that correct?

SMITH: Yes, I believe we had proof beyond a reasonable doubt in both cases.

And remind us, who exactly was responsible for January 6?

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”

But but but wasn’t Donald Trump just doing FREEZE PEACH statements of his opinion?

“There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate Federal law and use knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history.”

Thanks for clearing that up!

And by the way, Smith reminds us, it wasn’t Democrats who made up the case against Donald Trump. It was Republicans.

“The president was preying on the party allegiance of people who supported him. The evidence that I felt was most powerful was the evidence that came from people in his own party who […] put country before party and were willing to tell the truth to him, even though it could mean trouble for them.”

Mike Pence, for instance. He would have made a powerful witness at a trial, with testimony about Trump demon-dialing him and now-disbarred John Eastman whining to Pence that Trump could get away with his coup if only Pence was willing “to consider one more relatively minor violation and adjourn [the House] for 10 days” so Eastman et al. could “investigate” and “audit” the fraud that surely must have occurred in order for Trump to lose.

Or other Republicans, like head of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, Lawrence Tabas, who directly told Trump that he did not win the state, only for Trump to be like lalala I didn’t hear you, fraud fraud fraud! Or the Pennsylvania electors who would only sign off on the fake electors if there was a clause in there saying Trump would only use their certificates if he won all of his election lawsuits first.

Noted Smith: “there was a text chain with some of the people who were carrying out this scheme for President Trump basically ended with, ‘These people should be shot,’ because — ‘and that we can’t let this snowball like this; otherwise, we’re going to have to do this in all the other States.’”

DAMN. NING.

Fox News and conservatives tried to make hay about Smith saying he would not have called Cassidy Hutchinson.

What Smith actually said:

“[M]y recollection with Ms. Hutchinson, at least one of the issues was a number of the things that she gave evidence on were secondhand hearsay, were things that she had heard from other people and, as a result, that testimony may or may not be admissible, and it certainly wouldn’t be as powerful as firsthand testimony.”

Gee, that sure doesn’t sound like exoneration.

And here is a juicy tidbit: Smith says Rudy Giuliani didn’t believe the vote-fraud bullshit he was peddling either.

“Our evidence was, he did not. And, in fact, when we interviewed him, he disavowed a number of the claims. He claimed they were mistakes or hyperbole, even the claim about Ruby Freeman, where he, you know, basically destroyed this poor woman’s life by claiming she was a vote scammer. President Trump did the same thing in a recorded call with the Secretary of State; he disavowed things he’d said in that interview.”

And Smith said he would not have called Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, or Peter Navarro as witnesses due to their “highly uncooperative nature.” We would also add that they all have the credibility of guys selling Rolexes from the inner pocket of a trenchcoat outside of a bar.

And finally, Smith revealed that by the time Trump got into office and shut the investigation down, he had not decided on bringing charges against alleged co-conspirators Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, and Boris Epshteyn.

Yeah, we will use our free speech to say, never forget that Trump did all that shit. And then some! And he ought to have been put in prison a long time ago.

We will never forgive Merrick Garland for taking two whole fucking years to appoint a Special Counsel. Yeah, yeah, the Supreme Court Six had obviously been planning to let Holy Executive Trump, the pig more equal than others, off the hook no matter what. But still! Voters deserved to see the evidence. And Trump sure deserved to spend every day of the rest of his life answering for himself in various courtrooms, like any other schmo who broke the law would have.

It was the greatest failure of federal law enforcement in American history, and we and the rest of the world will all be paying for it for the rest of our lives.

[Transcript / Politico]