Jack's not playing

Trump lawyers requested and received a meeting with Jack Smith in July.

Smith, joined by deputies J.P. Cooney and Ray Hulser — both veteran public corruption prosecutors — greeted Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro, who had started on the job less than two weeks earlier.

“After some short pleasantries, Smith invited the Trump lawyers to sit at the conference table and offered them some water to drink,” [Jonathan Karl writes in an account of the fateful July 27 meeting in his forthcoming book, Tired of Winning.]

Lauro quickly launched into a lengthy presentation, making the case that Smith should forgo charges against Trump related to his bid to subvert the 2020 election.

Sitting across the table from Smith and his prosecutors, Lauro spoke virtually uninterrupted for nearly an hour, Karl writes.

Lauro’s presentation featured a now-familiar case — that Trump genuinely believed he won the election and was exercising his First Amendment right to challenge it and raise questions; that Trump was following the advice of his lawyers; and that he had already faced impeachment and an extensive congressional investigation over the matter. Indicting him would just inflame a divided country further, Lauro said, according to Karl’s account.

“As Lauro spoke, the prosecutors took notes, but they said nothing. Smith waited until Lauro was done speaking and then, without commenting on what he just heard, he bid the Trump lawyers farewell,” Karl writes. “According to sources with direct knowledge of the meeting, Smith did not ask a single question. And aside from the pleasantries at the start of the meeting (including the offer of a glass of water) and the goodbye at the end, neither Smith nor the two prosecutors said anything at all.”

Four hours later [...] Smith unfurled a superseding indictment against Trump in Florida, where he was already facing charges for hoarding classified secrets after leaving office.

“Smith had given the Trump lawyers no hint it was coming,” Karl writes.

  Politico

Nice.