Biden-Harris prosecutor Jack Smith still has his sights set on meddling in the 2024 election.
But Smith isn’t getting a free pass from the media to wage lawfare against Donald Trump.
And Jack Smith got called out by the one person no one ever expected.
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig slams Jack Smith for politicizing the justice system
CNN’s liberal legal analyst Elie Honig is no fan of Donald Trump.
Honig thinks Trump deserved to be indicted.
But what appalled Honig – a former federal prosecutor – is the fact that Jack Smith is now blatantly wielding the powers of his office to wage political war against Donald Trump.
Honig was less than impressed with Jack Smith filing a 165-page brief in the January 6 witch hunt outlining all of his evidence against Trump under the pretext of the trial judge needing to decide if the charges Smith brought against Trump could stand after the Supreme Court’s Presidential immunity ruling.
In a column for New York Magazine, Honig wrote that Smith isn’t even pretending that the point of this filing is anything more than damaging Trump’s chances of winning the election.
“The larger, if less obvious, headline is that Smith has essentially abandoned any pretense; he’ll bend any rule, switch up on any practice – so long as he gets to chip away at Trump’s electoral prospects. At this point, there’s simply no defending Smith’s conduct on any sort of principled or institutional basis,” Honig wrote.
Smith bends the law
American criminal trials operate under the assumption that the accused is presumed innocent, and the burden of proof is on the government.
Honig argued that Smith and Obama-appointed Judge Tanya Chutkan flipped that on its head.
Normally, in a criminal case, the defense makes a motion to dismiss charges and then the government responds.
Not so in this case.
Chutkan allowed Smith to submit his 165-page filing first, which Chutkan promptly made public while making some laughable redactions just so Smith could air his case in public before the election.
But Honig argued this wasn’t just preventing the judicial system from accomplishing political goals.
Smith also violated Trump’s legal rights.
“Which brings us to the second point: Smith’s proactive filing is prejudicial to Trump, legally and politically. It’s ironic. Smith has complained throughout the case that Trump’s words might taint the jury pool. Accordingly, the Special Counsel requested a gag order that was so preposterously broad that even Judge Chutkan slimmed it down considerably (and the Court of Appeals narrowed it further after that),” Honig added.
This brief is a summation of the testimony Smith collected at the grand jury phase – where Trump didn’t have lawyers present – as well as all the evidence he plans to submit before the jury.
Donald Trump can’t answer any of this in court at the moment.
Honig stated that not only does this brief prejudice the voters against Trump, but it also represents the prosecution and the judge telling potential jurors Trump is guilty before he even has a chance to make his case.
“Smith now uses grand jury testimony (which ordinarily remains secret at this stage) and drafts up a tidy 165-page document that contains all manner of damaging statements about a criminal defendant, made outside of a trial setting and without being subjected to the rules of evidence or cross-examination, and files it publicly, generating national headlines,” Honig wrote. “You know who’ll see those allegations? The voters, sure – and also members of the jury pool.”
