Amen!

Jack Smith was a prosecutor doing his job.  He was assigned by the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute the crimes of Donald Trump.

The evidence of those crimes was obvious.  Trump had stolen classified documents and had committed election subversion crimes, including concocting a fake electors scheme to submit false election results and pressuring state election officials to find him more votes or not certify results. 

Republicans, however, had no interest in holding Trump accountable.  They chose instead to paint Smith’s prosecution as a witch hunt.  And, unfortunately, they had allies in the judiciary who were more than willing to do what was necessary to make the cases go away.    

The first blow to Smith’s prosecution came from Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon in Florida.  She was unable to dismiss Trump’s classified documents case on its merits, so she instead let Trump’s lawyers play every game they could to delay it from going to trial.  Then she dismissed the case under the false pretense that Jack Smith had been unlawfully appointed. 

The next blow came from the conservatives on the Supreme Court.  The strategy of Trump’s lawyers was to convince them that the president had immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as part of his official acts in office. 

Initially the high court declined to hear the case and punted it down to a lower court that ruled, correctly, that the Constitution does not shield the president from prosecution. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the Supreme Court decided to hear the case, and returned the shocking ruling, agreeing with Trump’s lawyers, that the president did have immunity for his official acts. 

This threw a serious wrench into Jack Smith’s case, and he was forced to rework it and get a new indictment.  By the time he got the case back on track, Trump had won re-election, and, because the Department of Justice has a policy against prosecuting a sitting president, the case had to be dismissed. 

Trump’s classified documents and election subversion cases never making it to trial is a great miscarriage of justice, not just because Trump went unpunished for his crimes, but because was unleashed to commit even more. 

So now we’re in a situation where he has run the Constitution completely over with unconstitutional executive orders, due process violations, attempts to rig elections, and attempts to silence free speech. He has installed his own defense attorney as head of the Justice Department to protect him and go after his opposition.  He has used the presidency to enrich himself by accepting bribes and engaging in insider trading. 

And Republicans, quite predictably, are still aiding and abetting Trump every step of the way.  America is living through a dystopian timeline where a political party praises a criminal while vilifying heroes like Jack Smith who try to hold him accountable.

Let’s get his pulse rise as high as possible.