Shortly after the Justice Department announced Jack
Smith as its special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump on
several fronts, many observers, including at Slate, reasonably
worried that the appointment would unnecessarily delay the DOJ’s ongoing
investigations—possibly by months or even years.
At the time, Smith was living and working as a
prosecutor in The Hague and had suffered a bicycle accident that would leave
him in the Netherlands for what the New York Times described as “some time” to recover, and those
worries were only exacerbated. But to the relief of many close followers of
these cases, now that he’s on the job, Smith seems to be a man in a hurry.
On Monday, the Washington Post reported that Smith has
issued a federal grand jury subpoena for
testimony from Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Since the start of December, three other important Smith steps have become visible.
You can count on many more going on behind the scenes and under cover of grand
jury secrecy.
First, on Dec. 2, Trump’s White House counsel Pat
Cipollone and his chief deputy, Patrick Philbin, testified before Smith’s
grand jury. He wasted no time getting them there after a federal judge ruled the day before that
they must appear and testify. They had declined in September to answer
questions based on executive privilege.
As
we have seen from the Jan. 6 hearings in Congress, these White House insiders
had catbird seats witnessing crucial aspects of all three parts of Smith’s
investigation: the unlawful “quiet coup” efforts to
overthrow the election before Jan. 6; the Capitol siege itself; and Trump’s
post-presidency failure to return the government its documents—including
top-secret ones—as the White House counsel reportedly advised Trump he
needed to do. Trump instead stashed many at his Mar-a-Lago country club home,
as well as elsewhere.
Second, on Dec. 6, Smith subpoenaed officials in
battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona seeking records of
post-2020 election communications between Republicans there and Trump, his
campaign, and several of his allies.
We’ve
long known that Trump and his campaign ran a multipronged post-election scheme
to persuade battleground state Republicans to reverse their state’s
certifications of President Joe Biden’s win. Trump lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and John Eastman seem to have led
it, appearing before battleground state legislative bodies to argue Trump’s
case.
And Trump personally participated. He called for friendly
legislatures to help him stay in office. He introduced Giuliani on a call
in which the former New York City mayor made an unsuccessful pitch to Arizona’s
then–Senate Majority Leader Rusty Bowers to appoint “fake electors” to cast
Electoral College votes for Trump.
The
concerted, multistate effort looks very much like the basis for charging a
conspiracy to defraud the United States of
its lawful government function in a presidential election. Smith’s Dec. 6
subpoenas aim to collect evidence of the scheme held by state officials.
Third,
on Dec. 9, after months of Trump’s failure to provide a custodian of records willing
to swear that Trump had returned all documents with classified markings
improperly in his possession, Smith brought a motion for contempt against the
former president’s office.
At
this, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell did what judges usually do the
first time discovery-type motions are brought to them: She told the parties to “work it
out.”
The
point, however, is that Smith is aggressively pursuing his assignment. He wants
both to get back the government secrets and gather all the evidence he needs posthaste. The contempt motion
signals not only that he has lost all patience with Trump
but also that the pressure is on to indict him.
Which brings us back to No. 4: Smith’s newly reported
subpoena to Raffensperger. It’s no mystery why Smith wants his testimony;
Raffensperger was the man who recorded Donald Trump in an hourlong conversation
on Jan. 2, 2021. In that call, Trump infamously said, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.”
Not coincidentally, at that moment, Trump was behind
in the Georgia vote by 11,779 votes. Trump’s musings
about “finding” one more than his deficit so he could get all of Georgia’s
electoral votes came in a call that included a strongarm suggestion that Raffensperger
might be guilty of a crime if he didn’t help Trump.
Well, what the federal code makes a crime is for any “person
acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or
privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” The call
to Raffensperger was plainly the former president’s willfully soliciting a
state official to deprive Georgians of their vote. And the call is taped.
Prosecutors seldom come upon better evidence.
One might wonder why it took Jack Smith’s appointment
as special counsel to have that subpoena issued. Whatever water has passed
under that bridge, these four very visible steps in December are telling us
that Smith is on the case now. He seems to have swept aside any barriers that
may have been impeding swift progress to justice and accountability for Donald Trump.
-Slate
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.