The case Jack Smith didn't get a chance to bring

President Donald Trump took classified documents related to his private business interests from the White House in 2021, according to materials the Justice Department apparently provided to the House Judiciary Committee.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, suggested in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that the new documents were handed over by mistake in a slapdash effort to discredit the dormant criminal case against Trump.

[...]

Raskin told Bondi the documents sent to the Judiciary Committee this month appeared to be part of a misguided Justice Department effort to feed Jordan damaging information about Smith.

“Apparently blinded by the frenzied search to find any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted to level an attack against Special Counsel Smith,” Raskin wrote, “you have, quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded from Judge Aileen Cannon.”

  HuffPo

Oopsie.

Clowns in charge of the country will inevitably make mistakes.

“These new disclosures suggest that Donald Trump stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them, that the documents President Trump stole pertained to his business interests, and that Susie Wiles, then the CEO of Donald Trump’s super PAC, witnessed President Trump showing off a classified map to passengers on his private plane,” Raskin said in the letter.

Raskin asked Bondi to tell lawmakers in a classified setting who was on the plane, what the map showed and which of Trump’s various business interests were relevant to the documents. The letter includes an image of an aircraft manifest with a redacted passenger list from a 2022 flight from Florida to New York.

Yeah, Pam's not going to do any favors for Jamie Raskin. To be continued when Democrats gain control. Or will it be swept under the rug as they've always done?

If the map related to U.S. military posture in the Middle East and was shown to foreign officials, “that would amount to an unforgivable betrayal of our men and women in uniform who are currently valiantly fighting in President Trump’s disastrous war against Iran,” Raskin said.

Yes, but would it be out of character for Trump? He's never been working for the interests of the country.

I'm guessing that this evidence is in Smith's second report that Aileen Cannon is blocking and Pam Bondi is refusing to release.

No surprise here

 

Dems on the House Judiciary Committee pull no punches

 I'm sure Pam Bondi will 86 this letter and not even respond, but it's an amazing piece of work, and it will go in Congressional records. (For as long as we still have them.)

            [...]

Read the whole thing here.

Dropping the case in Florida

No surprise here.

By hook or by crook

Trump 2.0 is essentially all crook.

Everyone knows that with Trump now in office the Department will move to dismiss the [stolen documents] case against Trump’s two co-defendants (as it has precipitously done with respect to all pending J6 defendants in Washington D.C.). Trump is hardly going to prosecute his two co-defendants, particularly since any trial will put front and center his own actions and result in his being a central witness in the case.

Yet, the Department has not moved to dismiss its appeal of the Cannon decision [to block release of the Smith report] — the only live activity left in that case. At least, not yet. And there’s the rub.

[...]

Indeed, the only legal issue preventing the release of the Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago report is the pendency of that appeal— that is the reason given by former Attorney General Garland for not making it public, and it is the reason given by Judge Cannon for not even permitting then-Attorney General Garland to share the report with certain select members of Congress. Indeed, this evanescent stumbling block (ie the inevitability of Trump’s DOJ dropping the criminal case) led many (including this author) to wonder why former Attorney General Garland did not move to dismiss the Cannon appeal, so that he would be able to further the settled public interest in the release of as much of Special Counsel reports as possible.

[...]

It is hard to come up with a more plausible reason for the Department’s odd sloth – made all the more striking by the new administration’s lightning speed in dismissing the J6 cases – than to thwart any efforts by Democrats, reporters and others from gaining access to the Smith report.

[...]

This inaction of course protects Trump. But it also serves another function. By not moving to dismiss the appeal now, the Department does not risk the report being unveiled – a report that is likely to cast substantial doubt on factual assertions made by Kash Patel. It had been widely reported that Patel claimed to have witnessed Trump declassifying the documents wholesale. Presumably to learn about this claim, Patel was reportedly called to the grand jury by Smith and asserted his fifth amendment rights (as is well within his rights). But Smith is reported to have obtained an immunity order which would require Patel to then testify under oath in the grand jury. Whether he did so, and what he then said (to the grand jury and/or to investigators) is unknown. And what remains under seal as well is Smith’s presumably detailed factual refutation of Patel’s public claim.

  Just Security

UPDATE 01/29/2025:  They're dropping the case now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Rely on Garland?

This makes sense.  That report will never see the light of day if Garland doesn't release it now.  It will most likely "disappear".  And, Trump is either going to drop the case against these two himself, or pardon them, so what's the point in keeping it open?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

AG releases Smith's January 6 report

The full report is here.

Comments and exerpts:

Donald Trump would have been convicted of crimes over his failed attempt to cling to power in 2020 but for his victory in last year’s US presidential election, according to the special counsel who investigated him.

[...]

“The department’s view that the constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind,” Smith writes.

“Indeed, but for Mr Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”

[...]

Smith writes: “Significantly, he made election claims only to state legislators and executives who shared his political affiliation and were his political supporters, and only in states that he had lost.”

The report underscores Trump’s persistent spreading of “demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false” claims about the 2020 election.

[...]

[P]rosecutors considered charging Trump with inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol under a US law known as the Insurrection Act.

Prosecutors ultimately concluded that such a charge posed legal risks and there was insufficient evidence that Trump intended for the “full scope” of violence during the riot, a failed attempt by a mob of his supporters to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election.

The indictment charged Trump with conspiring to obstruct the election certification, defraud the US of accurate election results and deprive US voters of their voting rights.

Smith’s office determined that charges may have been justified against some co-conspirators accused of helping Trump carry out the plan, but the report said prosecutors reached no final conclusions. Several of Trump’s former lawyers had previously been identified as co-conspirators referenced in the indictment.

[...]

Smith wrote in a letter to Garland attached to the report: “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. I believe the example our team set for others to fight for justice without regard for the personal costs matters.”

[...]

After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election”.

  The Guardian

Another lame-ass move by Biden.  They thought they were poking a finger in the eye of the GOP who had denied Garland his judgeship hearing, and instead played into their hands.

I guess Garland couldn't avoid being Garland, so he simultaneously released the Hunter Biden report.

Aileen stands aside - sort of

Federal Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday denied a request to extend an injunction banning the Justice Department from releasing a volume of a report former special counsel Jack Smith issued on President-elect Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

  MSN

I'm still not convinced we'll see any of it.

Clarence Thomas sits over the 11th Circuit.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 04:50 pm:

UPDATE 01/14/2025:  

Didn't happen.  Perhaps Thomas - or Alito - alerted Trump that they wouldn't stand in the way.  Smith's January 6 report is released.

Cannon balls

Why?  She doesn't have anything to do with the January  6 case.

Both sad and disgusting.  This was Smith's case to try.

Nor will a lot of Americans.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 01/12/2025:

Amen

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Inch by inch

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10:55 am:

Amen.

If I close my eyes, you can't see me

Aileen Cannon would really like to be appointed to a higher court this time.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 01/08/2025:

UPDATE 01/08/2025 09:13 am:

In short, we'll never see the report on the documents case.

UPDATE 01/08/2025 06:37 pm:

UPDATE 01/09/2025:

UPDATE 01/10/2025: