By Mike Huckabee
June 19, 2023
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We’ve looked at the career of Special Counsel Jack Smith --- the federal attorney chosen by Attorney General Merrick Garland out of all the possible candidates to investigate Trump --- recently in this newsletter, concluding that if Garland were out to “get Trump” (surely not!) Smith would be his go-to guy.
Mark Levin, on Sunday’s LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN, did a similar examination and came to the same conclusion. Levin calls him “Jack-the-Ripper Smith.”
Smith laughably used to head the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division at the ‘Justice’ Department, and it was there that he had two major defeats in court. One, in 2016, was former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s conviction on corruption charges, which was overturned 8-0 (one justice recused) by the Supreme Court. “Justice” came a little late for McDonnell, however; his life had been ruined.
The justices ruled that federal prosecutors had relied on a “boundless” definition of the kinds of acts that could lead politicians to face criminal charges. Wow, since Trump entered politics, this seems par for the course, doesn’t it? And Smith is playing by the same playbook he used back then.
As Levin explained, “[Smith] takes a bribery statute, and expands it so preposterously, that even the Supreme Court says, ‘You can’t do this.’”
Quoting from POLITICO, “The justices set up a straightforward rule: ‘Setting up a meeting, calling another public official, or hosting an event does not, standing alone, qualify as an ‘official act [in return for a favor].’”
The other spectacular failure was Smith’s prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards, stemming from when he was in the 2008 presidential primaries running against Obama and Hillary. It was a sleazy story that stemmed from Edwards having a mistress who became pregnant, but the part Smith was prosecuting had to do with Edwards and/or his people asking donors to contribute money to help put up the mistress is an apartment and try to keep the story under wraps. Just a sordid mess all around, but it wasn’t a crime under the Federal Election Code. Smith essentially re-wrote the statute, trying to say this was campaign money simply because it helped Edwards’ image while he was running for President. The jurors concluded that “there wasn’t enough evidence there” to convict Edwards on an Election Code violation.
This is similar to what Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg did to try to say President Trump violated election law with payments to Stormy Daniels.
After the Edwards defeat, Levin said, “they shipped him off to the Hague, where he could chase down genocidal maniacs.”
But Levin brought up something in the timeline that hadn’t been evident to us: namely, that before he was sent to Europe, he was the acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee (Nashville), the heir to the position of U.S. attorney. When Trump became President in January 2017, he passed over Smith as U.S. attorney and went with someone else. Smith was so displeased by this, he resigned.
And now Smith, of all people, is the one prosecuting Trump, chosen by Merrick Garland, who, in turn, surely blames Trump for keeping him off the Supreme Court. See anything wrong with this picture?
Smith is using the Espionage Act of 1917, which was not intended for this purpose. He went with it because the Presidential Records Act, passed in 1978 and instituted in 1981, carries only a civil penalty, not criminal. LBJ was found to have directed his staff to hide top-secret information relating to the Vietnam War and illegal taps on President Nixon’s phones, but the Espionage Act was never invoked. But it was in President Trump’s case, because Smith is trying to maneuver him into prison.
The Presidential Records Act wouldn’t even apply to Hillary, as she was Secretary of State, but “no reasonable prosecutor” went after her on the Espionage Act. Hillary deliberately bypassed the government’s security system for her own communications, most likely to avoid the scrutiny of FOIA requests, and President Obama had to be aware of this. Also, as you know, they never even went after her on obstruction, though she destroyed thousands of subpoenaed records.
Smith was wrong to impanel a grand jury on this documents case. Even more serious, he should never have used the “crime-fraud exception” to violate attorney-client privilege and make Trump’s lawyers testify about their privileged conversations. (HIs lawyers had to withdraw from the case after being made witnesses.) There should never have been a warrant to raid Mar-A-Lago; recall that the FBI agents did not think this was necessary but were ordered to do it.
Levin had a question for Garland, Barr and all former attorneys general: “Did you ever read classified information in your vehicle when your driver was taking you from home to work at the Justice Department and back? Because if you did, you violated the Espionage Act.” But, as THE NEW YORK TIMES said on January 27, the Archives have no independent ability to enforce this.
The big guns at DOJ would have to be brought in, and they never have been until it was President Trump. Recall that Biden had to sign off on that, too.
Levin’s entire opening monologue is a must-see, as it goes on to compare the treatment of Presidents Trump and Biden.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/
The DOJ has responded to the request by the House Judiciary Committee for information on the Mar-A-Lago raid and, specifically, the classified materials that were retrieved in the search. This would also have included communications between the FBI’s DC field office and the U.S. Secret Service. They also wanted such basic information as who is working on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team. Needless to say, the DOJ rejected the request. Read this and know how totally fed up you would be if you were Jim Jordan right now.
https://www.politico.com/f/?
REVOLVER NEWS made a good point about what Smith is doing to make it appear as though he’s “going easy” on Trump. THE NEW YORK TIMES was able to report that “Jack Smith...opted not to request conditions routinely imposed on other defendants seeking to be released from custody, like cash bail, limits on domestic travel or turning in his passport.” Our recommendation of this article comes with a major Sarcasm Alert.
Investigative reporter Paul Sperry has looked at the FBI division behind the Mar-A-Lago raid and sees that it includes people, such as Brian Auten, who were in on the beginning of “Crossfire Hurricane” and helped create and spread the Russia Hoax. This is the case even though they are still purportedly “under disciplinary review.” The FBI declined to answer any questions about this.
Sources told Sperry that dozens of boxes and containers were taken from Trump’s residence, “very few of which actually contained classified information.” (That’s why those pictures the FBI released of boxes stacked in rooms mean NOTHING.) Sperry includes details about the scope of the raid that haven’t been widely reported. And two officials in particular, counterintelligence supervisor Jay Bratt and his predecessor in that job, David Laufman, are as partisan as it gets. Highly recommended reading.
https://nypost.com/2022/08/18/
Moving to Biden and HIS classified documents, James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, reveals that Joe Biden’s assistant Kathy Chung provided testimony that “undermines the White House testimony on the matter.” Boxes including classified documents were moved to three different locations around the Washington DC area, transported by personal vehicles. Once they got to the Penn Biden Center, they were NOT kept in a locked closet but were accessible to employees and others with access to the office space.
Biden’s attorneys have said that some of the documents they found were labeled “top secret” and related to Iran and Ukraine. (Biden, as U.S. Senator and then VP, would not have had the authority to declassify them.)
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/
Hunter Biden is having to give answers about his finances to the judge in his child support case in Arkansas. Considering everything his family is trying to keep under wraps, he might’ve been better off just paying the $20,000 a month for his daughter’s support. Couldn’t he just sell a painting (a tiny one) or get his “sugar brother” in L.A. to pay it?
One more on the Bidens and Burisma: Emails from Hunter’s laptop show that an associate of Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, who allegedly paid Joe and Biden each $5 million, opened a Maltese bank account for Hunter, with help from Hunter’s assistant Joan Mayer.
The bank, Satabank, closed in 2018 because of money laundering violations.
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