Jack Smith Went After a Republican Before - Case Got Overturned by SCOTUS Unanimously
Some people are just gluttons for public humiliation.
This is not the first time that Jack Smith, the special counsel for the Department of Justice in the federal cases against former President Donald Trump, has overzealously tried to take down a Republican.
In 2014, Smith went after former Virginia Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, for “participating in a scheme to violate federal public corruption laws,” according to a DOJ news release.
The case made it all the way up to the Supreme Court, where, in 2016, the convictions were unanimously overturned.
McDonnell and his wife were charged with unlawfully receiving gifts and loans from a donor.
“I basically set up meetings for a businessman in Virginia. I didn’t even go to the meetings. Spoke well of his business, which of course I did for thousands of companies promoting Virginia jobs. And because it was a donor and had given gifts to us which were legal and reported, that was somehow a crime,” the former governor said Wednesday on WMAL-FM.
Even the left-leaning Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the decision to overturn the convictions, which McDonnell said “says a lot.”
“There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that. But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the Government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his decision.
“Setting up a meeting, calling another public official, or hosting an event does not, standing alone, qualify as an ‘official act,'” Roberts added.
During an appearance on “Life, Liberty & Levin,” McDonnell asserted that Smith is “overzealous” and seems to prioritize winning over getting it right.
“I think he doesn’t do an honest look at the law to see if the facts apply to the law,” the former governor said.
Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley believes there is “less than meets the eye” to Trump’s latest indictment as well.
Turley told Fox News on Aug. 1 that when he went through the material in the complaint that the First Amendment protects, “it reduces much of this to a haiku.”
“Many of the things that the prosecutor is charging here [are] protected speech,” Turley said.
“The most jarring thing about this indictment is that it basically just accuses him of disinformation,” he continued.
“And this reminds me of sort of the [McDonnell] complaint, where he took the Virginia governor, got a conviction, and then it was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court,” Turley added.
“It is a bridge too far,” he said.
One would think that after being called out for his “boundless” interpretation of the federal bribery statute by even the most left-leaning members of the Supreme Court in the McDonnell case, Smith would be more cautious about bringing indictments that are clearly politically motivated and have no constitutional basis.
But once Trump derangement syndrome sets in, it seems impossible for Democrats to see straight.
As I said, some people are just gluttons for public humiliation.
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