General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This international criminal web is huge. Merrick Garland and "The Octopus" [View all]bigtree
(94,649 posts)...let me explain that Smith dismissed the charges just to preserve them for a future prosecution.
Excuse me if I'm not moved to more than that in response to complaints he didn't do enough, when complainants won't be bothered to pursue the charges still out there, much less look to see what the state of them is, even today.
We're still threatened with this fuckery because the PEOPLE didn't exercise their power to stop Trump - not simply because the courts and prosecutors, who were proceeding in an actual courtroom with those charges when we voted, were thwarted by Trump-friendly judges and justices who obligingly held back the evidence gathered as early as the fall of 2021 from admissibility in any proceeding for as long as they were able, keeping that evidence from grand juries, for instance, for that early prosecution that so many imagine was possible fro watching that Palin-picking, erstwhile republican on teevee, and repeating things from contradicting 'reporters,' instead of following the actual prosecution.
Here's a posit for the kids to take home with them, and bring back to be graded...
How do you get to the TWO multi-felony indictments of Trump for defrauding the election without the efforts of Merrick Garland, much less convictions?
In his report and testimony, Jack Smith clearly said that Donald Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 attack on the nation's capitol, and that the evidence of that incitement is in his indictment, along with Trump's coercion of others to alter votes as the basis of his multi-felony indictment.
How does he get to that prosecution without the arrests and convictions Garland's investigators and prosecutors achieved of over 1200 white supremacist, Trump-supporting rioters who his critics dismissed all throughout the prosecution as mere 'foot-soldiers?'
Moreover, how does Jack Smith obtain the evidence to get grand juries to bring indictments against a former president without the efforts of Merrick Garland's prosecutors who not only gathered the lion's share of that evidence from as early as the fall of 2021, but defended that evidence in myriad, successive courts packed with judges and justices obligingly setting the court dates for the unprecedented number of appeals as far in the future as they could.
Most notably, the Supreme Court's maga majority delayed their decision until right before we voted, AND invented immunities for the felon, which should have clued anyone in that they wouldn't allow Trump to be prosecuted before the election under any circumstances.
And, here's a bonus question:
Why wasn't the 17 months or so after the charges dropped more than enough time to hold a trial?
What's this crap about the prosecution delaying anything when they brought charges early enough for any process that wasn't deliberately obstructive? (and don't just excuse the complicit judges and justices just to dump on the prosecution)
Here's some reading while we wait for answers: (only to the points raised, please, kids)
Politico put it succinctly in outlining conclusions in Smith's final report:
But Smiths report emphasized that the Justice Department was aggressively investigating leads related to Trump long before the special counsels tenure began. Litigation tactics by Trump and his allies, Smith argued, were the key factors that slowed the process to a crawl.
...It took Smith more than a year to obtain text messages between Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. And the department spent months fighting to access communications of John Eastman, a lawyer who helped devise Trumps last-ditch efforts to remain in power.
The most protracted battles of all stemmed from Trumps broad invocation of executive privilege to try to prevent witnesses from providing evidence, Smith wrote. It took months of secretive legal proceedings to secure testimony from Trump White House aides such as Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino and Pat Cipollone. Former Vice President Mike Pence also resisted testifying until a court ordered him to reveal some but not all details about his interactions with Trump. Smith noted that judges broadly rejected Trumps privilege claims, with one holding that he was engaged in an obvious effort to delay the investigation.
Smith also drew attention to what may have been his biggest foil: the Supreme Court. He pointed out that the justices rebuffed his effort to put Trumps presidential immunity claims on a similar timetable to the one the court adopted five decades earlier in litigation over Watergate and President Richard Nixons tapes.
And Smith argued that the Supreme Courts resolution of Trumps immunity assertion essentially guaranteed another round of litigation that would have been all but certain to return to the justices if Trump had not won the election and the prosecution had continued.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/14/jack-smith-special-counsel-report-takeaways-00198252
It would be just a bit more credible, albeit still wrong, to be slinging shit at the prosecutors of Trump (all along the way, as the Trump camp did the same, even today), if it came with a equal or greater effort to hold the courts accountable for their enabling Trump to dodge a trial 15 months after he was indicted.
Weird to me because, they're still fucking there. The guy that stepped up to prosecute Trump and his band of insurrectionists and obtained dual multi-felony indictments is gone, in part because Americans turned away from that prosecution effort. I mean, who fucking encouraged THAT stupidity?
Who diverted away from that prosecution and effort, instead of bothering to defend the charges. Who is still doing that?
The very same courts packed with republican and Trump-nominated judges and justices are just humming right along with their enabling bullshit while people pretending they're attacking the felon by attacking the people who prosecuted him.