Jack Smith

Post Reply New Topic

BREAKING: Special Counsel Jack Smith makes a move like a chess master — files a motion to exclude special pieces of evidence in the 2020 criminal case including Trump's false claim that he is being politically targeted as well as other conspiracy theories.

If successful, this measure will stop Trump from polluting the courtroom with deranged lies...

Additionally, Smith cited the false conspiracy theory that undercover feds were hidden inside the January 6th crowd, working to instigate the violent coup attempt.

MAGA supporters have repeatedly tried to wash away the culpability for their violent actions by blaming the FBI and other federal agencies.

"The Court should not permit the defendant to turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation, and should reject his attempt to inject politics into this proceeding," Smith's filing reads.

Smith asked the court to bar Trump from peddling a "theory of selective or vindictive prosecution or to otherwise improperly inject politics into the trial."

The Special Counsel tore into the lie that Trump is being prosecuted to help Democrats—

"In addition to being wrong, these allegations are irrelevant to the jury’s determination of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, would be prejudicial if presented to the jury, and must be excluded," Smith wrote.

On top of that, Smith wants the court to prohibit Trump from telling the jury that other people ""including law enforcement, military forces, unidentified secret agents, and foreign influence" are responsible for the January 6th insurrection.

This is a no-brainer.

The court must grant Jack Smith's request.

buckle your seat belts, gentlemen, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Donald Trump started this year fighting two federal prosecutions that threatened to send him to prison. But he will end it free and clear of his most significant criminal legal problems.

With his resounding victory at the polls, and a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president, the key question is not if, but when, prosecutors move to dismiss or delay his federal election interference case in Washington, D.C.

Trump recently said he would fire special counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds” after he returned to the White House. Now, that won’t be necessary to bring his federal criminal troubles to an end.

Smith is taking steps to end both federal cases against Trump before the president-elect takes office, according to a source familiar with the Justice Department deliberations.

What does Trump’s election victory mean for these cases?
They’re on life support and likely to end even before the inauguration in January.

On the campaign trial, now President-elect Trump has vowed to fire the special counsel, Jack Smith, on his first day in office. But Trump would not need to dismiss Smith or order any new DOJ officials to fire Smith in order to end the criminal prosecutions.

In 2000, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the federal government on its powers and boundaries, concluded that a sitting president could not be indicted or prosecuted because that “would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.”

Administrations led by Republicans and Democrats have adopted the DOJ policy against prosecuting presidents.

The Florida case involving classified documents is a bit more complicated. DOJ could file notice with the appeals court that it is abandoning the appeal. But that case involves two other defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira.

Dismissing the appeal outright would also mean walking away from cases that prosecutors built against those two defendants, Trump’s personal aide and the property manager at Mar-a-Lago.

What’s more, the federal government may have a broader interest, because Cannon’s reasoning could upend the way special prosecutors have been appointed for decades.

But one DOJ veteran who wasn't authorized to speak publicly told NPR that Cannon's ruling would not be considered binding precedent, so the stakes could be lower.

Judge dismisses Trump documents case over special counsel appointment
Former Attorney General William Barr says voters have evaluated the allegations against Trump—and decisively rendered their own verdict.

"Further maneuvering on these cases in the weeks ahead would serve no legitimate purpose and only distract the country and the incoming administration from the task at hand," Barr said in a written statement first reported by the Guardian.

What happens to the special counsel, Jack Smith?
Special counsels are obligated to file a report on their actions with the Attorney General when they finish their work. The current attorney general, Merrick Garland, has pledged to make most of those reports public.

If Smith’s written report is not complete by Inauguration Day, it will be up to new DOJ leaders to decide its fate.

Mike Davis, a Trump ally, told a conservative interviewer this week that the attorney general “is probably President Trump’s most important appointment.”

Davis told the interviewer that Smith’s entire office should be fired and said, “After today, Jack Smith, you're going to be the hunted: legally, politically and financially. So lawyer up, buddy.”

Special counsel Jack Smith has resigned from the Justice Department on Friday, officials said in a court filing on Saturday.

The move was expected ahead of President-elect Donald Trump taking the oath of office.

Smith’s report on Trump’s alleged involvement in 2020 election interference is expected to be released soon. Trump has denied the allegations.

“The Special Counsel completed his work and submitted his final confidential report on January 7, 2025, and separated from the Department on January 10,” a government court filing said in a footnote.

The footnote was part of a Justice Department filing in which the government asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, not to extend a restriction that is temporarily blocking part of Smith’s report from being released.

Trump had been indicted on charges related to allegations that he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election results. He had entered a not guilty plea before the case was dropped. The federal charges, brought by Smith, were dismissed after Trump was elected in 2024. The Justice Department has a longstanding policy not to prosecute a sitting president.

Smith was appointed in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland said at the time that appointing Smith was in "the public interest" because Trump had announced his candidacy and Biden was also planning to run for a second term. Garland, who had been appointed by Biden, said in 2022 that his selection of Smith "underscores the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters."

Smith oversaw investigations into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as well as allegations that he mishandled classified documents.

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court ruled that the Justice Department could release Smith's report on Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The court, however, kept in place Cannon's order that the report's release must be delayed for three days to allow for Trump to consider whether to appeal the decision further.

Cannon said in a Saturday order that the Justice Department must submit a filing by 10 a.m. on Sunday confirming that the volume of Smith's report about alleged election interference does not discuss Walt Nauta or Carlos De Oliveira, two co-defendants in the classified documents case. Although the classified documents case against Trump was dropped, Nauta and De Oliveira still face charges.

Smith has said that he would not release the second volume of his report regarding the classified documents case as charges against the co-defendants are pending

President-elect Donald Trump "inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence" on Jan. 6 and knowingly spread an objectively false narrative about election fraud in the 2020 election, special counsel Jack Smith said in a report defending his investigation made public early Tuesday.

The 170-page report summarized Smith's investigation into Trump's efforts to maintain power after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, which culminated in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Smith's office conducted interviews with more than 250 individuals in connection with the investigation and federal grand jurors heard testimony from more than 55 witnesses as part of the probe.

Smith — who has been the subject of unending criticism by Trump, whose allies have suggested the special counsel should now face criminal charges — used the report to deliver a full-throated defense of his decision to bring charges.

"To all who know me well, the claim from Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable," Smith wrote.

He opined that — if it wasn't for his election in November that prevented the prosecution from moving forward — the case would have ended in the president-elect's conviction.

“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's report stated.

Trump criticized the report on his website Truth Social, pointing out that it was released at 1 a.m. and repeating false claims about the House committee that investigated Jan. 6.

"Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election," Trump wrote.

Smith’s report said that Trump’s actions, resulting in the interruption of America’s record of peaceful transfers of power, were without historical comparison and that Trump’s “political and financial status” as well as “the prospect of his future election to the presidency” made the investigation more challenging.

Trump’s “ability and willingness to use his influence and following on social media to target witnesses, courts, and Department employees” was a “significant challenge” for the office, causing the special counsel to “engage in time-consuming litigation to protect witnesses from threats and harassment,” the report said.

He pointed to Trump's continued praise of Jan. 6 rioters as further evidence that the president-elect had intended to incite the attack.

"He has called them ‘patriots’ and ‘hostages,’ reminisced about January 6 as a ‘beautiful day,’ and championed the ‘January 6 Choir,’ a group of January 6 defendants who, because of their dangerousness, are detained at the District of Columbia jail," Smith wrote.

The report says that Trump spread voter fraud claims that were "demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false" and that Smith's office determined that "Trump knew that there was no outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election, that many of the specific claims that he made were untrue, and that he had lost the election."

Smith pointed to testimony that Trump privately admitted to losing, including telling an aide after watching Biden speak, "can you believe I lost to this f’ing guy?”

Smith, who resigned Friday, also wrote a second volume of his report focused on the separate charges brought against Trump over his handling of classified documents, but that part of the report was not released because charges against two of Trump's co-defendants are still pending.

Smith's report stated that prosecutors would have been able to show that Trump decided before the election that he would allege fraud whether it occurred or not, and that after he lost he "adhered to that plan — repeating false claims that he knew to be untrue."

Trump, who was separately convicted of 34 felonies in connection with hush money payments to an adult film star during his 2016 campaign, had denied wrongdoing in connection with the effort to overturn the 2020 election. A federal grand jury indicted Trump on four felony charges — conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights — related to Jan. 6 and the efforts leading up to it. Under long-standing Justice Department policy that prevents the sitting president from being tried, the charges were dropped upon Trump's victory in November.

Smith wrote in his report that his office also considered charging Trump under the Insurrection Act, but ultimately concluded that it would be difficult to prove given the complicated legal definitions of “insurrection” and whether incitement had occurred.

were included in the original indictment. He did not name them, saying the report should not seen as exhonerating them. He did, however, reveal that while continuing to investigate co-conspirators, the special counsel referred to an U.S. attorney's office that "an investigative subject may have committed unrelated crimes."

While Trump has never publicly conceded that he knew he lost the 2020 election but continued to insist otherwise, a federal grand jury said the false claims he spread were "unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing."

The delay strategy Trump's legal team used ultimately allowed him to avoid trial before American voters elected him again last year and resulted in a Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity that will grant him wider latitude in office.

The report was released as Trump says he is preparing to pardon an untold number of Jan. 6 defendants. More than 1,580 defendants have been charged and more than 1,270 have been convicted on charges ranging from unlawful parading to seditious conspiracy. More than 700 defendants have either already completed their sentences or were never sentenced to any period of incarceration in the first place. Asked whether he could pardon rioters who committed violence against police officers, Trump did not rule it out.