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Trump is Guilty <
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I'm behind on rent money. I'm going to have to suck a lot of dicks
before Saturday.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought federal charges against
former President Donald Trump, is an “overzealous” prosecutor who relies
on ethically dubious tactics, including media leaks and enticing
witnesses, say those who have been caught in his snare.
Mr. Smith headed the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section
during the Obama administration from 2010 to 2015. He led a team of 30 prosecutors pursuing public corruption cases against major political
figures.
Mr. Smith and other prosecutors — some working on the Trump case — have followed a familiar playbook. The script earned Mr. Smith a reputation
as a hard-driving, intense prosecutor, but a string of mistrials and
overturned convictions led to sharp rebukes from federal judges,
including U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
“These are no white knights. They are very dangerous and will use any
tactics to win at all costs,” said former Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican whom Mr. Smith’s team convicted in 2013 on corruption and
fraud charges.
Mr. Renzi maintained his innocence but served nearly two years in prison
before Mr. Trump pardoned him in 2021. He credits a 190-page white paper
that his legal team submitted to the Justice Department claiming
“repeated, concealed and corrosive” misconduct by prosecutors.
He said he was shocked by the similarities between his case and the
prosecution of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump was charged with 37 felony counts, including willful retention
of national defense information, obstruction and false statements. Walt
Nauta, an aide to the former president, has also been indicted in the investigation.
A review found that Mr. Smith’s team followed the same playbook in the
Trump case as in other high-stakes political prosecutions of both
Republicans and Democrats. That playbook has resulted in a spotty
record:
• Mr. Smith’s conviction against former Virginia Gov. Robert F.
McDonnell, a Republican accused of accepting payments and gifts in
violation of federal public corruption laws, was overturned by the
Supreme Court.
• The case against former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, a
Democratic presidential candidate accused of illegally using campaign
cash to conceal his mistress and love child, ended with a hung jury and mistrial.
• The prosecution of Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat accused
of taking bribes, collapsed in a mistrial.
• The conviction of New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a
Democrat, on federal corruption charges was overturned by an appeals
court. He was convicted during a second trial, but an appeals court
threw out three of the six guilty verdicts. He died last year.
“Government lawyers have a higher duty to the truth and cause of
justice, and that’s where some of these government prosecutors, like Mr.
Smith, have fallen short,” Mr. McDonnell said. “They are smart and well-credentialed, but they don’t seem to be exercising good judgment
when it comes to this point.”
Mr. Menendez declined to comment.
A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment for this report.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has staunchly defended Mr. Smith’s
standing as a “veteran career prosecutor.”
“As I said when I appointed Mr. Smith, I did so because it underscores
the Justice Department’s commitment to both independence and
accountability,” Mr. Garland said last month. “He has assembled a group
of experienced and talented prosecutors and agents who share his
commitment to integrity and the rule of law.”
Attorney-client privilege
Several patterns emerge from most of Mr. Smith’s high-profile
prosecutions. The first is a questionable piercing of the
attorney-client privilege.
In the Trump case, Mr. Smith’s team persuaded a federal judge to set
aside the protections under the crime-fraud exception. The exception
allows attorneys to break attorney-client privilege if they believe the
legal advice was used in furthering a crime.
The ruling allowed prosecutors to access notes of Trump attorney Evan
Corcoran that formed the basis for much of their allegations against the
former president.
Mr. Smith took a similar tack in the Renzi case. He submitted as
evidence recordings of the former lawmaker’s private conversations with
his attorneys.
U.S. District Judge David Bury concluded that prosecutors unlawfully
recorded the calls, and he ordered them to be suppressed along with the
fact that the calls were wiretapped.
“The government’s conduct, in its totality, warrants a more significant sanction than just suppressing the privileged evidence. The court
suppresses the wiretap,” Judge Bury said, adding that the government
“acted unreasonably” to “exceed its authority.”
Mr. Smith was more successful in the McDonnell case. The 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that attorney-client privilege did not
protect emails from a government lawyer. The court concluded that Mr. McDonnell’s legal team failed to prove that the emails constituted legal advice.
Mr. McDonnell said he is still “stunned and incredibly disappointed”
that confidential discussions with his attorney were disclosed to a
grand jury.
Media leaks
Another hallmark of a Smith prosecution is leaking to news media.
Several high-profile cases have been punctuated by news reports
revealing evidence favorable to the prosecution.
Mr. McDonnell said the case against him was littered with leaks,
beginning with a newspaper report of the investigation.
“There is no question the initial story came from the government leaking
things to The Washington Post,” he said. “There was a grand jury
impaneled, and it was pretty clear that grand jury information was being
leaked to The Washington Post, which is a separate violation of the
law.”
Mr. Renzi’s experience was similar. Ahead of the 2006 midterm elections,
when his seat was hotly contested, news of his corruption investigation appeared in local and national media. Some reports cited Justice
Department officials.
The leaks were so pervasive that Justice Department officials, including
FBI Director Robert Mueller, issued a memorandum with a “stern message”
about prosecutors’ obligation to preserve the confidentiality of investigations.
Mr. Menendez’s legal team said prosecutors engaged in a deliberate
pattern of media leaks that damaged the senator’s credibility with the
public to increase the chances of indictment. The attorneys said
prosecutors’ actions amounted to “serious misconduct.”
Last month, several outlets published a leaked audio recording of a 2021 private meeting between Mr. Trump and staffers. The former president
discussed holding secret government documents that he did not
declassify.
“The media leaks are a three-pronged attack,” Mr. Renzi said. “It taints
the jury pool, suppresses voter turnout and pressures the judge to rule
in their favor.”
Witness enticement
Stanley Woodward, an attorney for Mr. Nauta, said a prosecutor on Mr.
Smith’s team trying to secure cooperation suggested that Mr. Woodward’s application for a judgeship would be considered more favorably if he and
his client turned against Mr. Trump. Mr. Woodward has filed a complaint
with the chief U.S. judge in Washington alleging prosecutorial
misconduct.
In the McDonnell case, prosecutors filed charges against the former
governor’s wife and promised to drop the charges if she would testify
against him.
The government promised to pay $25,000 to Phillip Aries, the cooperating witness in the Renzi case, but prosecutors invoked his testimony more
than 90 times during closing arguments. Mr. Aries said he did not
receive “one thin dime” for his cooperation.
Weeks before Mr. Renzi’s Supreme Court petition, Mr. Aries emailed a
prosecutor seeking his $25,000 payment, which he said would be like
“winning the lottery.”
Although the FBI promised the payment, Mr. Renzi said, Mr. Smith’s team
was aware of the deal and concealed it from the defense team.
Pushing limits of the law
Another hallmark appears to be a broad interpretation of the law,
resulting in several rebukes or failed prosecutions in Mr. Smith’s
political cases.
Mr. Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, was charged
with six counts, including three counts of violating the Federal
Election Campaign Act.
Ultimately, the Justice Department was embarrassed when the jury
deadlocked on five of the six felony counts and acquitted Mr. Edwards on
the last one.
The National Review, a conservative news journal, questioned the
government’s claims before the trial. It said efforts to conceal an extramarital affair and illegitimate child hardly amounted to election
fraud.
In the Menendez case, 10 of the 12 jurors said prosecutors stretched the definition of the bribery and corruption statute and failed to make the
case that receiving the gifts violated federal law.
The most stunning condemnation was in the McDonnell case when the
Supreme Court overturned his conviction.
“There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than
that,” Justice Roberts wrote in a unanimous opinion. “But our concern is
not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is
instead with the broader legal implications of the Government’s
boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jul/4/jack-smiths-record-rife-m istrials-overturned-convi/
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