Team Trump is seeking to rewrite history not only to clear Donald Trump of any wrongdoing ever, but declaring along the way that anyone who investigated, prosecuted or suggested differently broke the law themselves. Especially Jack Smith.
We’ve seen it with pardons for the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters at the Capitol, we’ve seen it in pardons for those near and dear to Trump, we’ve seen it in attacks on the judges and prosecutors involved in his conviction on 34 felony counts in New York and civil rulings that found him to be a sexual abuser of E. Jean Carroll. We’re witnessing Trump’s discomfort in any mention of his longtime close friendship with child rapist Jeffrey Epstein.
Now comes word that the Justice Department’s Office of Special Counsel is taking the unusual step of opening a non-criminal investigation of Jack Smith, the former special counsel who oversaw two federal prosecutions of Trump, for potentially violating the law barring federal officials from political activity.
It’s a blatant case of “weaponizing” justice in the opposite direction that Trump repeatedly has blistered for years — abusing the power of the presidency to pursue political opponents.
Of course, in this case Jack Smith was an opponent only because he did his job as special counsel. And the law under which this investigation will proceed is the Hatch Act, which bars federal officials from political activity.
What the Hatch Act aims to do is to stop most federal employees from using their official duties to promote or influence elections — frankly the kind of things that have become so commonplace in the White Houser that we don’t even notice it anymore. It is not only ludicrous but fully hypocritical that this administration hectors a prosecutor for actions that the administration itself values daily.
Why Now?
Last week, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked acting special counsel Jamieson Greer — someone you might think has his hands full with his other job as U.S. Trade Representative during the tariffs and trade war deluge — to look into whether Smith “unlawfully took political actions to influence the 2024 election to harm then-candidate President Donald Trump.”
A quick look at the calendar might remind Cotton and others that Smith was appointed well before the election, and that it was Trump and his legal team who kept delaying various legal hearings and taking appeals that brought Smith’s prosecution anywhere near the 2024 elections.
Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed charges stemming from discovery of loads of classified document in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in a ruling that undercut Smith’s appointment as special counsel, and a set of charges related to Jan. 6 never made it to trial as the election loomed.
Also, Trump won, which might nullify any “political” violation of the Hatch Act.
Trump may have pardoned his Capitol rioters, but it has not erased the fact that he sought to undercut the 2020 elections and remain in office. Trump may have the Smithsonian exhibit about impeachments of presidents revamped to remove mention of him, but his double impeachments still exist. Whatever the mentions of Trump in Epstein files exist are still there despite his ever-changing stories about his role.
The broad whitewashing brush that Team Trump uses to rewrite history doesn’t change what happened. It’s an attempt to force us to see him as an unblemished hero.
That won’t wash.
