Federal prosecutor Jack Smith, who never managed to put the then Republican candidate, Donald Trump, on the bench, despite considering that there were plenty of reasons in two separate cases, .
Smith appeared, at his own request, before the House Judiciary Committee to explain to congressmen his role as special prosecutor. He was appointed in 2023 by Merrick Garland, head of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, to investigate Trump for his management of the Mar-a-Lago papers, confidential documents that he took without permission to his private residence in Florida, and for his participation in the events that led to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Both cases were buried by the electoral victory of the now president of the United States.
“Our investigation provided irrefutable evidence that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith said at the beginning of a lengthy five-hour hearing. “If you asked me today if I would prosecute a former president based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether he was a Democrat or Republican. And I would say this: ‘No one, absolutely no one, should be above the law in this country, and the law demands accountability.’ That’s what I did.”
Smith based his defense against the attacks from the Republican caucus by sticking to the facts and resorting again and again to his record prior to becoming one of Trump’s biggest enemies. He presented himself as an “apolitical” lawyer who simply accepted a task that turned out to be extraordinarily complex. Democratic congressmen praised that work again and again, perhaps without realizing that this insistence .
“Democrats have been going after President Trump for 10 years, and no one should forget that,” said Republican Jim Jordan (Ohio), chairman of the Committee. “The guy that Americans, ‘we the people,’ elected twice.” In his initial intervention, Jordan reviewed the two impeachments (political trials), in 2020 and 2021, to Trump, the scandal over and the four criminal proceedings against him, which led months before his second victory at the polls in a conviction for 34 serious crimes. This came in what was held in New York, in relation to a payment in black money to a porn actress so that she would silence an extramarital relationship that the convicted person still denies.
The ranking Democratic member, , recalled that “when [al fiscal especial] was asked if he believed the evidence was sufficient to obtain a criminal conviction against him, his response was a single word: ‘yes.” Raskin was one of nine members of the bipartisan commission that studied the events for 18 months on January 6 and concluded that Trump deserved to be prosecuted. He stated that Smith “thoroughly investigated the facts”, that he “complied with all laws and ethical standards”, and accused the president of the United States of “taking control of the Department of Justice”, and of acting “without dissimulation, based on reasons of political and personal revenge.”
Intervention in Truth
About an hour after that, Trump came to prove those accusations when he interfered in the Congressional hearing from his account on the social network Truth, in which he described Smith as a “deranged” – a far cry from his words on Tuesday, when he called him a “sick son of a bitch – “He is being annihilated before Congress,” Trump posted, in another of his exaggerations: the prosecutor was successful in cooling the mood in the room with a calm attitude, a tone monotonous and
“I should not practice law,” Trump also wrote. The Republican, in another blatant interference in the affairs of his Department of Justice, added: “I hope the Attorney General [Pam Bondi] is investigating his actions, including some of the corrupt and dishonest witnesses he attempted to use in his case against me. It was all a scam by the Democrats; They should pay a high price for what they have done to our country!” When the hearing ended, the president returned to Truth: “Given his testimony today, there is no doubt that [Smith] “He deserves to be prosecuted.”
The argument of members of his party, who did not provide new evidence, is that Biden instrumentalized the Department of Justice and that is why Trump is now taking revenge. His representatives accused Smith again and again of participating in a “conspiracy” that proved unsuccessful: the cases that accumulated against the then candidate only increased his advantage over his rivals both during the Republican primaries and in his confrontation with Kamala Harris.
Four of the police officers attacked during the assault on the Capitol attended Congress this Thursday. Smith smiled at them before taking the oath at the beginning of a hearing he himself had requested for the opportunity to defend his actions. The Republicans, who had already taken his statement in December behind closed doors, tried without success to prevent it from taking place.
starred in one of the moments of the day. It was when Texas Congressman Troy Nehls, one of Trump’s most loyal representatives, author of a book that defends the hoax that the Democrats stole the 2020 elections, defended that the injured agents were victims of the management of the Capitol authorities, and not of the violent mob. While feigning a loud cough, Fanone muttered: “Go fuck yourself in the ass.”
