Biggest Loser in DOJ History Takes a Final L on His Way Out the Door

Special Counsel Jack Smith moves to dismiss his four-count criminal indictment against President Trump related to January 6, adding to his long list of failures at the DOJ.

Pour one out for Jack Smith.

After two years of fawning press coverage and promises that the international war-crimes prosecutor would finally put Donald Trump behind bars, the special counsel today hammered the final nail in his own battered coffin by dropping his four-count J6-related indictment in Washington against the incoming president.

The move represents yet another failure by the Democratic apparatchik who once ran the Department of Justice’s public integrity unit under the Obama administration. Since then, Smith has been on a losing streak unmatched in DOJ history, suffering one loss after another before the Supreme Court and trial courts; in 2016, SCOTUS unanimously overturned the bribery conviction of Bob McDonnell, the former Republican governor of Virginia, a case Smith brought in 2014. Smith also failed to secure convictions in his prosecutions of former Senator John Edwards in 2012 and former Senator Robert Menendez in 2015.

This year, the highest court rebuked Smith on three separate occasions. First, the court rejected Smith’s rarely-used and desperate request to bypass the D.C. appellate court in considering the presidential immunity question and decide the matter quickly in an attempt to get the J6 case to trial before the election. The court a few months later reversed how the DOJ applied 18 USC 1512(c)(2), the post-Enron document destruction statute that represented two of the four counts in the J6 indictment against Trump. And on July 1, the court issued its landmark opinion in Trump v US, which gutted the J6 case by concluding most of the conduct cited in the indictment represented official acts protected by presidential immunity.

If the DOJ had a Hall of Shame, it would be named after Jack Smith.

But being the dirty Democratic operative that he is, Smith had to take a few parting shots at the man who defeated him both in court and at the ballot box. Smith asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to dismiss the indictment “without prejudice,” suggesting the matter could be reconsidered once Trump leaves the White House. The case needed to be dropped for now, Smith argued, based on two Office of Legal Counsel opinions—one related to President Richard Nixon and one related to President Bill Clinton—determining a sitting president cannot be prosecuted under separation of powers provisions in the Constitution.

“And although the Constitution requires dismissal in this context, consistent with the temporary nature of the immunity afforded a sitting President, it does not require dismissal with prejudice,” Smith wrote in his six-page motion. “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant.”

That, of course, is another lie. Even if Trump had lost the election, the J6 indictment would not have survived another immunity test before the Supreme Court, which criticized Chutkan and the D.C. appellate court for fast-tracking the denial of presidential immunity without first conducting necessary due diligence.

Chutkan, like Smith, hasn’t demonstrated an ounce of contrition since the smackdown by SCOTUS. And remaining true to form, Chutkan in her order this afternoon granting Smith’s motion to dismiss also warned the case could be revisited in four years. “Dismissal without prejudice is also consistent with the Government’s understanding that the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office,” Chutkan wrote.

Bye bitch.

Smith also filed a closing brief in the classified documents case, which was tossed by Judge Aileen Cannon in July after concluding Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution. The DOJ appealed her order; Smith today dismissed the appeal in the charges against Trump but not his two co-defendants, Mar-a-Lago employees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. One must safely assume Trump’s attorney general will move quickly to dismiss those charges as well.

Republican lawmakers flocked to social media to celebrate Smith’s demise. "The Jack Smith cases will be remembered as a dark chapter of weaponization," Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) wrote. "They never should have been brought. Our elections are decided by voters--not by fanatical, deranged liberal lawyers like Jack Smith.”

“This lawfare was always politically-motivated. And this lawfare MUST NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN,” Rep. Byron Donalds posted.

But the time for tough talk is over and the time for tough action is now. With control of the executive branch, House, and Senate, Republicans must now exercise political power in the same way Democrats do: open investigations, hold public hearings, and pursue criminal charges where appropriate.

After all, plenty of evidence exists to support conspiracy charges against Smith and his team, particularly in the classified documents case which revealed collaboration between the National Archives, the DOJ, and the Biden White House to concoct a documents crime against Trump as early as spring of 2021. Court proceedings in Florida also disclosed examples of evidence tampering, destruction of evidence, and witness intimidation not to mention the selective nature of bringing a documents case against a former president for the first time in history while at the same time other public officials including Joe Biden and Mike Pence were found to have unlawfully kept classified files after leaving office.

The armed raid of Mar-a-Lago alone is worth a separate investigation.

So, it remains to be seen if social media bravado translates into real accountability. But for now, a moment of celebration is in order.