Thursday, former Special Counsel Jack Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee in a mini version of the two criminal trials of Donald Trump that America would have gotten had not Trump returned to the White House last year.
Smith easily parried the unhinged attacks by GOP congressmembers and presented, once again, the reality of Trump’s “catastrophic” efforts to upend our democracy. As Smith said under oath, Trump “engaged in criminal activity” to overturn the results of a fair election and also to purloin classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
The two trials that were aborted would have forced Trump to answer for his actions in the run-up and aftermath of his 2020 election loss and his illegally retaining government records when he retreated to Florida. Those trials never came, but the Trump’s own public conduct and the exhaustive work of Smith’s team of prosecutors have clearly established Trump’s culpability and nature.
We should all here pause to consider the implications of it being considered brave for a former federal prosecutor to merely stand before Congress and truthfully answer questions. And let’s be clear that it is brave; Trump and his cronies have demonstrated very conclusively that they are willing, even eager to weaponize the functions of the government against perceived enemies. This is done neither subtly nor rarely, as Smith’s own onetime colleagues in the DOJ are now asked routinely to bring frivolous prosecutions against officials at every level of government and even private citizens who are seen somehow undermining Trump’s authority.
From New York Attorney General Tish James to Fed Chair Jay Powell to Kilmar Abrego García, a man whose only transgression seems to have been embarrassing the administration via his mistaken deportation, the threat of the awesome might of the federal apparatus coming down on your head for your speech, political position or very existence is all too real.
This weaponization is, of course, partly what Smith was investigating in the first place. When Trump tried to pressure members of Congress, state officials and his own vice president into using procedural tools to reverse the results of the 2020 election, he was implicitly or sometimes explicitly invoking the idea of using his authority to punish those who did not go along.
When that didn’t work, Trump turned to violence, having his goons attack the Capitol in an active effort to overturn American democracy. No amount of revisionist history or MAGA uproar will change these facts. Trump, despite his and his congressional toadies’ insinuations to the contrary, was never acquitted or cleared of these charges. It was his subservient Supreme Court that gave him the get-out-of-jail-free card in the form of the disastrous immunity decision, dealing the investigation a blow that preceded the knockout of Trump’s 2024 election. This win does not at all negate the reality of what he did.
Faced with this weighty reality, Chair Jim Jordan and the other clowns in his MAGA circus used their time with Smith to attack him in personal terms and crow about his decision to subpoena limited phone records from some lawmakers, though they conveniently left out that these records were related to Trump’s attempts to lean on Congress to subvert the rule of law. No matter; this is what we’ve come to expect from the captured GOP.
If past is prologue, Trump will again try to wield his power for his own personal purposes. Local and state officials, federal personnel still loyal to the Constitution, federal judges and others should be ready for that eventuality; the consequences of his success are dire.
