reSee.it - Tweets Saved By @willscharf
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Hunter Biden's tax free holiday shopping list! He's making a list, deducting it twice, gonna find out which stripper he likes. Hunter Biden's coming to town! A thread of my favorite lines from the new Hunter Biden tax fraud indictment. (1/16)
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Hunter spent money on literally "everything but his taxes." Drugs ✅ escorts ✅ girlfriends ✅ luxury hotels ✅ "items of a personal nature ✅ TAXES ❌ (2/16) https://t.co/zIi8XNmsHk
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Hunter spent over twice as much on porn and strippers (adult entertainment) than he did on rehab. (3/16) https://t.co/CSpzYI1hEZ
@willscharf - Will Scharf
I pity the AUSA or agent who had to decipher Hunter's text messages. This is one where he excoriates his assistant after he failed to notice his tax return sitting on his own desk for over a month: (4/16) https://t.co/tqLH1mRBPF
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Hunter makes the absolute worst excuses for everything. When his ex-wife found unfiled two year old tax returns sitting in the trunk of his car, he tried to claim they were copies, even though there were literally checks attached to them. (5/16) https://t.co/Io5Rd8ojH6
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Hunter told his ex-wife that he couldn't pay alimony because he had to pay his taxes. But then didn't pay his taxes either. Switcheroo! (6/16) https://t.co/Dz1pcVC5Lc
@willscharf - Will Scharf
With the IRS and his accountant breathing down his neck, and hundreds of thousands in tax payments due, Hunter takes care of what's really important: His boat payment. (7/16) https://t.co/iZJHHlPouE
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Hunter *forgets* to tell his accountants about his forthcoming memoir that contradicts literally everything he is telling them about his business life and expenses: (8/16) https://t.co/0TgmAPaddd
@willscharf - Will Scharf
An excerpt from Hunter's memoir paints a picture of his actual entourage at a time when he was supposedly racking up hundreds of thousands of "business expenses" -- An "ant trail of dealers and their sidekicks . . . [and] [t]heir stripper girlfriends": (9/16) https://t.co/5PIWLZ4fQs
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Hunter pays $1,500 to a stripper, purportedly for "artwork." But Special Counsel Weiss has now confirmed that the stripper did not in fact provide hunter with any artwork. (10/16) https://t.co/2OA2YdR8dD
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Hunter's secretary gets very upset when she finds out that Hunter is paying random girlfriends and ex-girlfriends as much as he is paying her. Hunter also loses track of which girlfriends he's paying, and how much he is paying them. (11/16) https://t.co/dsIUfCXptP
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Now some practical advice: It's important to note that "bacchanal" expenses are not deductible business expenses. (12/16) https://t.co/xPycq7jiV9
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Flying a stripper out to see you is not a deductible business expense. (13/16) https://t.co/t3SSciBfbB
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Membership fees for a "sex club" are not deductible business expenses, even if you call the money a "golf membership deposit." (14/16) https://t.co/yHGEVtIuiC
@willscharf - Will Scharf
$27,316 in payments to a porn site are not deductible business expenses, even if you use a business line of credit to make the payments. (15/16) https://t.co/T1s1f0dn0J
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Post your favorites if I missed any good ones! (16/16)
@willscharf - Will Scharf
BREAKING: President Trump files motion to dismiss D.C. case A short while ago in federal court in Washington, D.C., President Trump filed a motion to dismiss the case pending against him there for his alleged actions in the aftermath of the 2020 elections. The motion cites presidential immunity as a ground to dismiss the case in its entirety. This is a very big deal. The motion persuasively argues that the D.C. case should be dismissed, and if past practice is any guide all proceedings could and should be stayed while this issue is litigated fully. Notably, this same reasoning should apply to the ongoing Georgia prosecution as well. A number of legal commentators have anticipated this move, and in this thread I’m going to get into the weeds and review the core argument made—that presidential immunity is an absolute bar to the prosecution of President Trump for his alleged acts in office that underlie the federal prosecution in D.C. 1/6
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(A) Presidential Immunity At its heart, President Trump is arguing that presidents, even after their terms in office are over, are absolutely immune from criminal prosecutions arising out of their acts in office that fall within the “outer perimeter” of their official responsibilities as president, unless they have first been both impeached and convicted by the House of Representatives and Senate. And he’s arguing that all of the acts he is alleged to have committed fall within this absolute immunity. This view, as the motion filed today makes clear, is deeply rooted in bedrock legal principles, in caselaw, in the Constitution, and in actual practice dating back centuries. In Nixon v. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court ruled that a president has absolute immunity from civil liability for acts within the outer perimeter of their official responsibilities. In short, you cannot sue a former president personally because his official acts harmed you. This is unquestioned Supreme Court precedent, based on very serious, core separation of powers concerns. If a president were susceptible to civil suit for his official acts, the Court held that this would “raise unique risks to the functioning of government” in light of the “singular importance of the President’s duties.” The purpose of presidential immunity, the Fitzgerald Court’s view, is to prevent concerns about being sued clouding the president’s judgment and crippling his ability to act—presidents need to be able to discharge their duties to the best of their abilities without having to worry about being haled into court when their terms expire. This well-established immunity doctrine has never been tested in the criminal context, for the simple reason that no president has been subjected to the sort of relentless prosecutions that President Trump has now been faced with, but the motion persuasively argues that the reasoning in Fitzgerald should still apply. 2/6
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(B) Impeachment Clause This view is also rooted in the actual text of the Constitution. The Impeachment Clause of Article I provides that, although impeachment proceedings do not themselves carry a punishment beyond removal from office, a party convicted after impeachment "shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.” By specifying that a president impeached and convicted could be subject to indictment, etc., the Constitution plainly and clearly implies that absent impeachment and conviction a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for his official acts. Democrats impeached President Trump twice, and on both occasions the Senate acquitted him. Absent a conviction at an impeachment trial, presidential immunity applies to all of President Trump’s acts that fall within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities, and for these acts at least he cannot be prosecuted. 3/6
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(C) Scope of Immunity Are the acts that underlie President Trump’s indictment in D.C. within this “outer perimeter” of his official responsibilities as president? I think the answer is clearly yes. First, it is very important to note that in the context of assessing immunity, the motive of a president is irrelevant. Why the president did something is immaterial; the question is what the president did and whether that was within this very broad outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. And because the scope of presidential authority and of presidential responsibilities is so vast, the catchment of presidential immunity is similarly expansive. When you actually review the alleged acts that underlie the D.C. indictment, my view is that each and every one clearly falls within the other perimeter of President Trump’s official responsibilities. We are talking about things like •Making public statements about the administration of the 2020 federal election; •Communications with public officials, both in the states and in the federal government, about the administration of the 2020 federal election; and •Taking steps, like assembling alternate slates of electors, to allow Congress and/or the Vice President to take action on the federal election fraud that he believed had occurred. Remember, for the purposes of assessing the scope of immunity, intent and veracity/falsity are irrelevant. Your views on whether President Trump’s views on the election were accurate are irrelevant. Your views on why President Trump did what he did are irrelevant. If the acts themselves were presidential acts, falling within the outer perimeter of presidential responsibilities, they cannot form the basis for a criminal prosecution of President Trump, because presidential immunity applies. As a result, since the entire indictment in the D.C. case against President Trump is predicated on acts that he is immune from prosecution for, the case should be dismissed. 4/6
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(D) Appealability One final note on timing: any denial of this motion to dismiss, or any similar motion in Georgia, is likely immediately appealable, as is the case in where Congressional legislative immunity is implicated. Which means, depending on how long it takes Judge Chutkan to rule, this issue could be before the D.C. Circuit and potentially the Supreme Court before long. 5/6
@willscharf - Will Scharf
Lastly, if you like this kind of analysis and want to see more of it, RT this thread and follow me here. And if you’d like to find out more about me, check me out on social media or at http://www.votescharf.com. 6/6
@willscharf - Will Scharf
My Take on the New Trump Indictment Special Counsel Jack Smith’s new indictment against President Trump seeks to criminalize political speech and to criminalize taking incorrect legal advice. Americans of all political stripes should be furious and deeply concerned by the course Smith has set this country on. I have reviewed the new Trump indictment closely, and sadly, it is exactly what we have come to expect from Smith’s team—a highly political document, riddled with legal and factual infirmities. This indictment should have never been brought to a grand jury in the first place. Moreover, its timing, particularly in light of Smith’s statements and actions in the Trump documents case, is so highly suspect that it casts a political pall over the whole case. I’m going to run through the various issues I see with this indictment. Apologies in advance for the length of this post, and for some of the more technical aspects of it. Happy to answer any questions. The Indictment Smith’s indictment contains four counts against Trump. The first, brought under 18 U.S.C. § 371, alleges that Trump conspired to defraud the United States “by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct federal government function by which those results are collected, counted and certified.” The second and third allege conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and the actual or attempted obstruction of an official proceeding, both in violation of subsections of 18 U.S.C. § 1512. The fourth alleges that Trump committed a “conspiracy against rights,” by knowingly conspiring to deprive Americans of their right to vote and have their votes counted, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241. Having read the indictment, having followed January 6-related cases closely, having read extensive news coverage, and having spoken to others with experience in this area of the law, I do not believe that any of these charges can fairly be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in front of a fair judge and jury. Additionally, I expect that, were this case to reach the Supreme Court, the Court would reject Smith’s theories of liability on all or at least some of these counts, as it did unanimously with his prosecution of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. Smith and his team did a real disservice to the cause of justice by bringing this indictment. (1) Trump’s State of Mind In the Trump documents case, we’ve already seen how thorny issues of intent can be. There, many of us have argued that, in light of the President’s rights and responsibilities under the Presidential Records Act, it is essentially impossible for Jack Smith to prove that Trump knowingly violated the Espionage Act subsection charged. Here, we have a similar issue. For all four of these charges, Smith needs to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knew that his claims about election integrity were false, and that he knew that the legal theories his team advanced were not viable. Not just that these claims were false, not just that Trump might have known that they were false, or that Trump should have known that they were false. If Trump did not actually know that his claims were false and the theories he was advancing were wrong, then I do not see how he can be found guilty of any of the four charges in the indictment. While Smith points to a few statements Trump allegedly made to others at various stages of his election challenges where he impliedly (if you squint hard enough) appears to concede defeat, the overwhelming gravamen of Trump’s statements and actions indicate that he believed that his claims—both factual about the conduct of the election and legal about potential remedies—were true. Considering the record as a whole, how does one go about proving that Trump didn’t believe his own arguments? Moreover, three of these counts charge conspiracy. For those counts, Smith likely has to prove that Trump’s alleged co-conspirators also knew that the claims they were advancing were false. And that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators all agreed, knowing that the claims were false, to press ahead anyway. Given the list of co-conspirators, their activities during the time period in question, and the interactions between them and Trump that have already been made public, I think the opposite is likely the case. In short, proving the requisite intent on the part of Trump and his alleged co-conspirators on all of these charges is likely impossible, at least in front of a fair jury in a fair courtroom. This indictment should never have been brought. (2) First Amendment Others have made this point publicly already, so I won’t belabor it. To put it simply, Jack Smith’s theory of the case necessarily requires criminalizing political speech. This is core, protected activity under the First Amendment, and the legal implications are truly scary for our democracy. Is any public challenge to a certified federal election a criminal act? In Jack Smith’s telling, the answer is probably yes. At what point do election challenges become criminal? Based of Jack Smith’s theory of the case, the answer to that is entirely unclear, meaning that the very fact that this indictment was brought may have a deeply chilling effect on protected speech in years to come. Hillary Clinton, Stacy Abrams, and many, many others have claimed for years that their elections were stolen from them. Stacy Abrams continued her efforts to challenge her defeat to Brian Kemp long after the results were clear. Andrew Jackson claimed that John Quincy Adams cheated him out of the Election of 1824. After the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections, Democrats attempted to interfere with the electoral count process. Did those actions constitute a Conspiracy Against Rights under § 241? Under Jack Smith’s theory of the case, I think the answer is unclear, but possibly. Taking political speech and political acts of this sort and shoehorning them into criminal statutes that have never before been used in this way is terrifying. Political candidates should not live in fear of prosecution by their political opponents for stating their views about their elections. Jack Smith, in his rush to “get Trump,” has done serious violence to our Constitutional order and Bill of Rights. (3) Requisite Intent under § 241 Section 241 is a statute that was originally designed to deal with violence against black voters by the Ku Klux Klan, and other similar efforts to deprive people of their constitutional rights. Jack Smith’s use of it here is outrageous on its face, designed to inflame perhaps more than anything else. But there are also serious legal issues that Smith and his team seem to have been willing to ignore in terms of the statute’s applicability to the facts alleged. In United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966), the Supreme Court grappled with the constitutionality of this statute, facing an argument that it was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. The Supreme Court ultimately held that the statute was constitutional, but only because of the heightened intent requirements that follow from it being a conspiracy statute. In the Supreme Court’s words, “[a] specific intent to interfere with the federal right [at issue] must be proved” on the part of the alleged conspirators. Only because of that specific intent requirement was the prosecution in that case allowable, and was the statute itself deemed to pass constitutional muster. In Anderson v. United States, 417 U.S. 211 (1974), the Supreme Court addressed the applicability of § 241 to a scheme to cast fake votes for federal, state, and local candidates in West Virginia. The Court cautioned that “[i]t is established that since the gravamen of the offense under § 241 is conspiracy, the prosecution must show that the offender acted with a specific intent to interfere with the federal rights in question.” Furthermore, the Court stated that “special care” was warranted in assessing this intent, because “charges of conspiracy are not to be made out by piling inference upon inference, thus fashioning . . . a dragnet to draw in all substantive crimes.” To prove his case, it’s not enough for Jack Smith to prove that Trump and his allege co-conspirators sought to overturn certified election results—he needs to prove that they acted with specific intent to deprive people of the rights to have their votes counted. This cannot be established by inference, under binding Supreme Court precedent. Smith needs evidence that Trump’s intent was specifically to deprive people of their right to have their votes counted. On the face of the indictment and public record, it doesn’t appear that he has anything close to meeting this high bar. (4) Issues with § 371 Section 371 is a statute that criminalizes defrauding the federal government or interfering in lawful functions of government. Its origins are in the tax fraud context, and it was originally cabined closely to property frauds against the federal government. Even after the statute was expanded, though, the Supreme Court has urged caution throughout the statute’s history that a conspiracy charge relating to the obstruction of governmental functions must be premised on the use of “deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest.” Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182 (1924). “Open defiance” of the law, for example, cannot give rise to a § 371 charge. Courts have consistently held that obtaining a conviction under this statute requires both the existence of an agreement to achieve an unlawful objective, as well as deliberate, knowing, and specific intent to participate in that agreement. Jack Smith’s theory is that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators conspired to “defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government.” But in light of the requirements for proving fraud conspiracy under § 371, Smith needs to show that Trump and his team knew that their theories were groundless when they promoted them to state legislators and other decision makers in the electoral count process, and encouraged those officials to take various official actions. And that Trump and his team agreed that this was the plan—promoting theories they knew were groundless, based on facts that they knew were false, to these legislators and officials. The fact that Trump received advice to the contrary just doesn’t cut it, from a legal perspective, when it comes to proving a fraud conspiracy under § 371. This charge appears to be dead on arrival from a legal perspective. (5) Misapplication of § 1512 Section 1512 was originally enacted as part of the Sarbanes Oxley Act in 2002, intended to deal with the fallout from the Enron collapse and investigations. Subsection (c), under which Trump has been charged, deals primarily with destroying evidence in advance of judicial proceedings or legislative inquiries, but it also contains a catchall provision that criminalizes corruptly “obstructing” an official proceeding. The Biden DOJ has used this catchall provision, controversially, to prosecute January 6 defendants, and two of the counts in this new indictment track this theory—that Trump’s activities and statements constituted an obstruction of an official proceeding, namely the electoral count process. This is an issue that is expected to come before the Supreme Court sooner rather than later. In a sharply divided panel opinion this April, the D.C. Circuit allowed § 1512 charges to proceed against three January 6 defendants. But it did so only on the basis that, in the words of Judge Justin Walker’s decisive concurrence, the act’s requirement of a “corrupt” mental state on the part of the defendants sharply delimited its scope. In Walker’s view, to convict under this statute, a Defendant must have acted with the specific intent “to procure an unlawful benefit either for himself or for some other person.” (Judge Katsas dissented and would have dismissed the charges entirely). Under this reading of the statute, it is not enough that Trump (and in the case of the conspiracy charge his alleged co-conspirators) called for protests. It is not enough that Trump tried to prevent the certification of the election or the counting of electoral votes. Trump could have burned down the Capitol personally and that wouldn’t necessarily meet this high bar. He must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have done what he did to procure a benefit for himself that he knew to be unlawful. As with the other statutes discussed above, this is a very high bar to meet, and the facts as presented simply do not support this charge. (6) Timing As he did with his original indictment in the documents, Jack Smith accompanied his announcement of charges yesterday with a cynical call for a “speedy trial.” More than anything else, Smith’s insistence that these cases that he is bringing should be tried at the height of a presidential election adds fuel to the fire of President Trump’s expressed view that the Special Counsel is waging a political campaign against him, not a valid legal investigation. To put it simply, there is no reason why this case needs to be litigated now, as opposed to two years ago, or as opposed to after the presidential election in 2024. In the documents case, Smith followed his speedy trial call with a voluminous discovery production consisting of close to a million pages of documentary evidence, nine months of video recordings, and terrabytes of data to be analyzed by Trump’s defense team. He then proceeded to file a superseding indictment adding new charges and a new defendant. That case was either ready for trial at the time it was brought, or it wasn’t, but Smith can’t have it both ways—his public statements and court filings amount to a gaslighting of the federal court and indeed of the American people. In this case, the timing concerns are even more severe. The facts at issue date back to 2020 and the first few days of 2021. President Trump has already been impeached and acquitted for the same offense conduct he now faces these criminal charges for. Trump is now running to be president again (and winning in many polls). Inserting this case into the presidential election season has all the appearances of an attempt by Smith to substitute the judgment of his office, a single judge, and 12 D.C. jurors for the millions of Americans who would otherwise have had the opportunity to weigh these facts, alongside all the other political considerations that go into a presidential election. These millions of Americans will likely be faced with a choice to vote for Smith’s boss, Joe Biden, or his likely opponent, Donald Trump. Prosecuting a political opponent during a presidential election in this manner smacks of banana republic politics.
@willscharf - Will Scharf
I am a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, worked on two Supreme Court confirmations, and clerked for two federal appellate judges. The indictment and case against President Trump is outrageous and shocking. But let’s get into the details. Here are my 6 key points on the case:
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(1) Interplay between the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act A lot of my friends have spoken insightfully about the scope of the Presidential Records Act. I’d direct you to Mike Davis’s (@mrddmia) commentary on the subject, and also Michael Bekesha of…
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(2) Classification and National Defense Information I want to reiterate this point because it’s really important: Just because something is classified—even Top Secret, SCI, NOFORN, FISA, pick your alphabet soup—does not mean that it is National Defense Information (NDI) within the meaning of the Espionage Act. NDI, for the purposes of an Espionage Act § 793(e) prosecution, is defined as one of a long list of items “relating to the national defense which information the possessor had reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” A lot of the documents listed in the indictment are older, or seemingly random. Would Trump in 2022 have had reason to know that a 2019 briefing document “related to various foreign countries, with handwritten annotation in black marker” could harm the US or help foreign countries? Tough to say, because we can’t see the documents, but that’s a question the jury is going to have to decide in the end, and Trump’s legal team needs to drive home this point over and over again: Classification is not dispositive in this case. Harm to America or benefit to foreign countries is the standard. Anyone who has worked around government knows that overclassification is a huge problem. A ton of documents end up being classified because of arcane technical rules that may not reflect the real world. If the president were to ask the Navy what’s for lunch for the next week at Coronado, for example, I’ll bet you the answer comes back with a classification marker on it. Not everything classified constitutes NDI. Focus on the actual legal standards and statutory language, not a bunch of scary looking all caps acronyms.
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(3) Walt Nauta and DOJ Misconduct Far and away the most troubling side story to emerge from this saga so far are the allegations made by Trump aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta’s lawyer last week. You may have missed it if you blinked. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media has…
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(4) Attorney Client Privilege The indictment relies on a significant amount of information received, in one form or another, from one of Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran, who was compelled to testify in front of the grand jury. According to news reports, the argument for breaching the privilege was the crime fraud exception. Let’s talk a little about it. The attorney client privilege protects from disclosure to the government confidential communications made between clients and their attorneys. It has been around for centuries, and is considered a core protection in our system of justice. The crime fraud exception, though, allows the attorney client privilege to be broken in rare circumstances when two requirements are met: First, there needs to be a prima facie showing that the client was engaged in criminal conduct. Second, the client has to have obtained or sought the attorney’s assistance in furthering that crime. I haven’t seen DOJ’s filings on Corcoran, but I’d be interested to know how they argued this. First of all, what was the crime they used as a predicate? Was it unlawful retention of the documents? If so, there’s nothing in the indictment that I can see indicating that Corcoran’s communications with Trump would have furthered that in a way that would justify breaching privilege. Was it obstruction? I think this is the most likely option: they pierced attorney client privilege using obstruction as the predicate crime for the crime fraud exception, saying that Trump’s conversations with Corcoran amounted to him attempting to enlist Corcoran in a criminal obstruction scheme. Now, we’ll see how that goes for the Government. I have my doubts. But if that’s the case, just reading this indictment, it feels like the obstruction charges may have been structured specifically in part just to get Corcoran’s testimony in, to help buttress what would otherwise be a much weaker case against Trump on the substantive charges. In any case, the Special Counsel is going to have to show why the communications in question were a solicitation by Trump to Corcoran to join him in criminal acts, as opposed to Trump asking a lawyer he hired to advise him on his legal defense, to tell him what his options were, or to outline what defensive steps might be possible, and what was done by others in previous cases like Hillary’s emails. Reading the conversations in the indictment, they sound a lot more like honest attorney client communications than they do crime fraud to me, even with all ellipses and modifications. I expect a motion by Trump’s legal team on this issue, and if they win that will cut the guts out of much of this case. Very tough to prove up intent and willfulness the way the government needs to without Corcoran, at least based on what we see in the indictment.
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(5) Timing: Why now? This is not a legal defect in the indictment, but it’s an important point. Why are they bringing this case now? They know that Trump is the leading candidate for president. They know he’s beating Biden in the polls. They must know how bad it looks for a sitting president’s DOJ to indict that president’s primary political opponent. DOJ has long had policies in place to prevent new indictments from being brought, or overt investigative acts being committed, in the months preceding an election in order to avoid the appearance of political timing. The same reasoning clearly applies here. They didn’t have a statute of limitations issue, they could have easily just announced the facts as they saw them after the search warrant was executed and all the documents were recovered, and then held off on further investigative acts and the indictment until after November 2024. The fact that they didn’t is strong evidence to me that a big part of this is the burning desire among many on the left to “Get Trump.” They don’t care about the law, they don’t care about the facts, they don’t care about norms or propriety or anything else. They just want Trump in cuffs. It’s not the way things are supposed to work, and the fact that our law enforcement and intelligence apparatuses are being weaponized in this way against a leading presidential contender is truly a black mark on them and on our republic. If I were Trump’s lawyers, I would consider moving to continue further proceedings until after November 2024. Let the case sit. The country doesn’t need to litigate this right now. We need to pick our next president. If DOJ won’t agree to that continuance, let them explain why this has to happen right now. There is no good reason that I can see.
@willscharf - Will Scharf
(6) Jack Smith: Why him? If you could pick any lawyer in the country to handle a controversial case against a former president, a case involving an aggressive, unprecedented use of the Espionage Act, a controversial law in and of itself, what lawyer would you pick? You’d probably want just a consummate professional, right? Career prosecutor with no political profile at all? White knight in shining armor who’s never lost a case? Or you could pick Jack Smith. I follow law stuff pretty closely. I’m a huge nerd. I knew who Jack Smith was before this, and the specific case he is most closely associated with in the public eye was the prosecution of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. Remember that one? Using a very aggressive interpretation of the scope of federal bribery and honest services fraud statutes, Smith nuked the career and life of a popular Republican politician, before having all his convictions overturned by the Supreme Court in a 9-0 opinion. You read that right, all nine Supreme Court justices smacked Jack Smith down for an overzealous, legally defective prosecution of a Republican politician. SCOTUS gutted him so badly that DOJ didn’t even try to re-try the case. They just dropped it. And his wife is a leftist filmmaker who produced a hagiography of Michelle Obama. And he currently lives in the Netherlands. Didn’t they have anyone else good on this side of the Atlantic? If this is not a political prosecution, if Merrick Garland wasn’t just trying to “Get Trump,” then why was Jack Smith the pick? Like the timing, the decision just reeks of politics.
@willscharf - Will Scharf
This has been fun. Happy to answer questions, and I’m sure I’ll post more as the case proceeds.
@willscharf - Will Scharf
It’s been pointed out to me that the final vote on McDonnell v. United States was 8-0, not 9-0, because Justice Scalia passed away before the opinion was issued. My point still stands. The Supreme Court unanimously said that Smith overstepped and smacked him down for it.