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9 hours ago
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A forlorn note from Jack Smith to Merrick Garland, the attorney general, provides a poignant epitaph into the unfulfilled and ultimately fruitless two-year criminal investigation into Donald Trump.
“While we were not able to bring the cases we charged to trial, I believe the fact that our team stood up for the rule of law matters,” the special prosecutor wrote in a letter attached to the 137-page report, which concludes that the president-elect would have been criminally convicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election if he had not been re-elected four years later.
“I believe the example our team set for others to fight for justice without regard for the personal costs matters.”
With Trump less than a week away from returning to the White House after having tried to stay there by resorting to foul play, there is a certain pathos to Smith’s insistence that his endeavours were not in vain.
There is also an irony that his incongruously hopeful message should be addressed to Garland.
The attorney general – despite being another of Trump’s frequent targets – has faced criticism for his handling of the investigation into the former and future president, including from Joe Biden, who Trump has insistently and falsely accused of using his constitutional power to orchestrate the special prosecutor’s investigation into him.
Far from that being the case, Biden is reported to have voiced regret for appointing Garland – a former judge who maintains a scrupulously above-the-political-fray posture – believing that he waited too long to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Trump.
That delay ultimately led to the investigation running out of time, as Trump and his legal team used repeated delaying tactics to run down the clock in the calculation that Smith’s work would be overtaken by the election – as ultimately proved the case.
“Merrick Garland is the greatest failure of an Attorney General in the modern era,” Dean Obeidallah, a liberal podcaster and broadcaster, posted on X following the report’s publication, repeating an earlier comment he made on MSNBC.
“Smith had tons of evidence to convict Trump but Garland prevented for more than a year an investigation into Trump.”
The messy ending is cruelly unsatisfactory for those who died as a result of the violent frenzy that unfolded as a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6, with the goal of keeping their man in the White House.
Meanwhile those who sat on the House of Representatives’ select committee that investigated the attack are left to hope that Biden will issue a pardon in his last few days in office to protect them from the wrath of Trump, who has said at least one of its members, Liz Cheney, the House’s former number three Republican, should face a military tribunal for her role.
The committee’s chair, Bennie Thompson, a Democratic representative from Mississippi, told Punchbowl that he would accept such a pardon if offered.
“I believe Donald Trump when he says he’s going to inflict retribution on this,” Thompson said. “I believe when he says my name and Liz Cheney and the others. I believe him.”
Concern over Trump’s possible revenge may be also be felt by Smith.
The release of the special prosecutor’s report at 1am drew a characteristic nocturnal diatribe from Trump, in the form of two social media posts that showed his sense of grievance burning brightly despite its contents having been rendered legally meaningless by his presidential election victory.
“Deranged Jack Smith was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his ‘boss,’ Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another ‘Report’ based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were,” the incoming president vented on his Truth Social platform barely 40 minutes after Smith’s report had been published.
Showing who was going to be boss from next Tuesday, he added: “Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!”
A few minutes later, he posted: “To show you how desperate Deranged Jack Smith is, he released his Fake findings at 1:00 A.M. in the morning. Did he say that the Unselect Committee illegally destroyed and deleted all of the evidence.”
It would be understandable if Smith contrived to view the incoming president’s late-night rage as affirmation that was, despite everything, meaningful.
Yet that is scant consolation given that its consequences are unlikely to ever visit Trump’s door – and may, in fact, rebound to haunt Smith and his team if the president-elect makes good on his threats to exact retribution.
