In the heated final lap of this year’s battle for president, special counsel Jack Smith stubbornly reintroduced the topic of whether Donald Trump attempted to steal the 2020 election.
Even though there will be no trial before Election Day, Smith showed his determination to bring the former president to justice by attempting to salvage his case after the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling destroyed his initial charge.
Following the special counsel’s Tuesday filing of a revised indictment that was supported by a fresh grand jury, “I think this is basically Jack Smith saying, ‘I still got this,'” remarked Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director and current AWN legal and national security analyst.
His action demonstrated the deep personal stakes that Trump has in the upcoming presidential election. If elected, he would not only regain the power to stop this and other federal cases against him, but he would also be able to avoid sentences that could include jail time.
“This is a very big year, it is a very important election,” stated Ankush Khardori, a former federal prosecutor, in an interview with AWN’s Alex Marquardt on Tuesday. The outcome of this case is dependent on the election, as it will be dismissed if Trump is elected. If Trump is defeated by Harris, this case will be resolved in some way.
At a pivotal juncture in our nation’s history, just ten weeks before an election with the power to radically alter our course and put our institutions to the test once again, Smith’s action casts additional deep shadows over the law, the constitution, and politics.
The contents of the latest indictment
There has been no change to the facts or evidence in Smith’s case. Trump is still facing conspiracy charges in the indictment, which aim to corrupt and disrupt the process of recognizing Joe Biden’s victory and defraud the federal system that counts election results. On top of that, it says he’s plotting to undermine the fundamental democratic right to vote and have it counted.
Smith omitted the notion that Trump promoted his allegations of election fraud through the Justice Department in light of the Supreme Court decision. In an effort to sidestep the central problem raised by the court’s decision, he sought to characterize the bulk of the remaining alleged behavior as that of a “candidate” instead than the president exercising his official authority.
Yet, there are still significant hurdles in his case. Tanya Chutkan, presiding judge of the district court, must now determine whether pieces of evidence are still acceptable by interpreting the decision of the high court. In addition, the former president’s legal team will vigorously challenge Smith’s arguments and pursue all available avenues of appeal. It is possible that Trump’s campaign and legal staff would accuse him of violating Justice Department policy by avoiding prosecution of prominent political individuals so near to the election. Obviously, Trump’s legal team’s effective actions in postponing the original case’s trial contributed to its postponement well before the election.
On AWN’s “The Situation Room,” Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who was a member of the House committee that looked into the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, said, “If Donald Trump doesn’t like how late this is happening, he should not have been delaying and postponing for many, many months.” Donald Trump and his associates on the Roberts Court have dealt Jack Smith a hand that he must play by keeping the process moving at a snail’s pace. Additionally, I find it admirable that Jack Smith is determined to expose this scheme no matter the cost.
The ex-camp was successful in postponing the January 6 federal case, but it was not enough to stop Trump from being convicted in a hush money case involving the 2016 election and a huge fraud judgment against him, his company, and his adult sons in New York. A separate case involving sexual assault claims made by author E. Jean Carroll established Trump’s defamation liability. The special counsel is currently appealing the dismissal of Smith’s case using secret materials against Trump by a Florida judge chosen by Trump. Georgia is home to yet another election tampering lawsuit that has had numerous setbacks. Every accusation against the ex-president has been met with a not guilty plea.
Prompt political fallout
An additional layer to the current showdown between the former president and the replacement Democratic candidate, Harris, is the political weight of Smith’s renewed effort to have Trump face unprecedented consequences for his acts.
Because of the uproar surrounding Biden’s terrible debate performance, his subsequent withdrawal from the race, and Harris’ storming start to her own campaign, Trump’s alleged criminality and autocratic ambitions have taken a back seat in the campaign, but the revised indictment will bring them back to the forefront of voters’ minds. If Smith tries to have evidence hearings in the next weeks, it might generate more news coverage about Trump’s alleged criminality right before early in-person and absentee voting starts, even though there’s no possibility the case could get to trial before the election.
For most candidates, being indicted again while running for president would be the ultimate political embarrassment. However, Trump has already utilized his criminal history to resurrect his campaign, most notably during the Republican primaries. His latest indictment arrived nearly one year after he turned himself in for booking at an Atlanta jail, where he was photographed for a mug shot that became a symbol of defiance for his campaign.
In the face of a fresh Democratic contender, Trump’s campaign has been reeling in recent weeks. Plus, the ex-president’s legal troubles weren’t a major talking point during the campaign. But as soon as the fresh charges against Smith were filed, his team’s tactics sprang back to life, and he brought back the central storyline of his campaign for reelection — the baseless accusation that he was a victim of election meddling by a weaponized Biden Justice Department. “In an act of desperation,” the former president said, Smith was attempting to “resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt in Washington, D.C..” He further asserted that the fresh charge was an effort to deflect attention away from the “catastrophes Kamala Harris has inflicted on our Nation” by interfering with the election.
Another fundraising call based on the case also quickly made its way into inboxes.
Harris faces a fresh obstacle
Additional difficulties have arisen for Harris as a result of the reemergence of Trump’s legal mess. As a strategy to counter Trump’s generational divide, she has spent the first weeks of her presidential campaign highlighting the hardships Americans have endured due to skyrocketing food prices.
The VP hasn’t been quite as vocal as Biden about framing her candidacy as a fight for the nation’s identity. Last week, though, she used Trump’s legal troubles to cast him as a “unserious man” whose return to the White House would have “extremely serious” repercussions.
On September 10, the debate stage will undoubtedly showcase the contrast between Trump, a convicted felon and indicted suspect, and the vice president, a former prosecutor, which many Harris fans find appealing.
The most recent indictment against Trump further supports Harris’s central argument that the United States is experiencing a “precious, fleeting opportunity” to overcome the anger, pessimism, and anarchy that have characterized the Trump administration. But her campaign still has to be worried that some moderate swing voters might think it’s too much to pin on the former president.
Not only did Smith’s most recent filing have far-reaching political and electoral consequences, but it also served as a sobering reminder of the bizarre fact that a president who was once and could be again is facing prosecution for trying to disobey the will of the people and remain in office after losing the election.
Given Biden’s exit from the campaign and the pomp of the conventions, the threat to democracy posed by Trump has been overshadowed in recent weeks. However, historians to come will surely be intrigued by the question of how a president who sought to undermine American democracy evaded accountability, ran for office again, and may have even won.