Jack Smith, the elusive special counsel handling the criminal investigations into Donald Trump for alleged possession of classified documents and the events of January 6, made his first public appearance last week. Sporting an unkempt beard and sour puss expression, Smith slouched into the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C. on June 6 while ignoring questions from a news reporter.
Smith, as he knew at the time, was about to make history. A few days later, Smith made a brief statement to boast about the multicount criminal indictment, including 31 counts for the “willful retention of national defense information,” he handed down against Donald Trump. (He again ignored reporters’ questions—to the extent any regime scribe even attempted to offer one.)
“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone,” a visibly nervous Smith nonetheless said with a straight face. “Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice.”
The veteran prosecutor with a spotty record of success was handpicked by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to give the illusion of an “independent” investigation into the former president and potential Republican rival to Joe Biden in 2024. But Smith’s team is far from “independent”; Justice Department officials already working on both matters simply changed letterhead and office space.
None other than CNN noted Garland’s sleight-of-hand. “Smith takes over a staff that’s already nearly twice the size of Robert Mueller’s team of lawyers who worked on the Russia probe,” four CNN reporters wrote a few weeks after Smith was appointed. “A team of 20 prosecutors investigating January 6 and the effort to overturn the 2020 election are in the process of moving to work under Smith.”
After hauling in everyone associated with Mar-a-Lago—from the maids to Trump’s personal attorney—to investigate Trump’s possession of classified material and any alleged obstruction of that investigation, Smith signed his name to a federal indictment against the 45th president. He is destined to be forever known as the government official who criminally charged a former U.S. president for the first time in history.
The cottage industry of legal experts who chased every shiny object—from cell towers in Prague and pee tapes in Moscow to washed-up spinsters and porn stars—finally will be vindicated. Thanks to Garland’s rogue Justice Department, an irredeemably corrupt FBI, and a rubber-stamp D.C. court system, the walls indeed have closed in on Donald Trump.
“Very Serious People” from across the political spectrum marveled over the weekend at Smith’s “speaking” indictment detailing Trump’s alleged crimes. If half the indictment is true, National Review’s Andrew McCarthy warned, Trump is “toast.” Former Attorney General William Barr, apparently too busy primping for his numerous television appearances to scrutinize the indictment on his own, mimicked word-for-word McCarthy’s assessment. (Former federal prosecutors-turned-cable news analysts aren’t known for their originality.)
John Brennan, the treacherous ex-CIA director who helped concoct the Russian collusion hoax among other covert operations to oust Trump, told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki his former colleagues in the intelligence community are “shuddering” at Smiths’ allegations. Equal application of the law, my foot.
No doubt when Trump does his perp walk in Miami on Tuesday afternoon, the nation’s capital will erupt with wild celebrations. So, too, will major cities across the country. Expect jubilance on the sets of broadcast and cable news channels. Will Anderson Cooper cry? What about Adam Kinzinger? The emotional outbursts will rival election night in 2016, when the entirety of the national news media melted down upon the realization Trump would be the next president. Some, in order to portray a nonexistent air of objectivity, will fake solemnity in the face of a historical moment.
And the professional political class won’t be the only revelers; expect to hear a chorus of cork pops as cul-de-sac white women break open the Sonoma Cutrer. Social media will be flooded with juvenile memes of the Bad Orange Man wearing an orange jumpsuit. Campuses inhabited by college students taking summer classes will resemble spring break in South Beach.
What the party-goers won’t realize—or maybe they will?—is that they are cheering America’s decline. A country once considered a beacon of hope and freedom, an escape from Marxist hellholes, will take one giant leap closer to banana republic territory. Charging and potentially jailing Trump isn’t the only accelerant; one could safely argue a retaliatory campaign of terror unleashed by Garland’s Justice Department involving armed FBI raids against mostly peaceful Americans who protested Biden’s rigged election ultimately resulting in outlandish criminal charges, circus trials before partisan juries, a political gulag in the shadow of the Capitol, and excessive prison sentences hastened the slide.
Silence from Republican leaders only served to fuel the vengeful rampage.
To ease the sting felt by the other half of the country, historians like Michael Beschloss and our media superiors will assure Americans that the prosecution of a country’s leader is totally normal in most parts of the world. “[Leaders] who left office since 2000 have been jailed or prosecuted in at least 78 countries—including in democracies like France, Israel and South Korea,” Axios helpfully reminded readers after Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg indicted Trump in March. “Since 1980, around half of the world’s countries have had at least one such case, and that’s not counting impeachments or coups.”
That sort of comparison, apparently, is supposed to assuage valid fears about where the country is headed after Trump’s arraignment. Further, the fact a former president can be indicted in America is proof of America’s promise, they’ll insist. “No one is above the law!” the well-worn rallying cry will echo throughout the internet.
Which, quite obviously, is a lie. At the same time Smith put the finishing touches on the Trump indictment, House Republicans last week emerged from a secure location in the Capitol after viewing an FBI document detailing an alleged $5 million bribery scheme between Joe Biden and a Ukrainian oligarch who just happened to own the energy company paying Hunter Biden roughly $80,000 per month as a “board member.”
The Biden family crime racket is one of Washington’s worst-kept secrets. But the media continues collectively to ignore the First Family’s blatant—and far more dangerous—law-breaking and instead amplifies imaginary crimes committed by Trump. No banana republic is complete without influential propagandists doing the regime’s dirty work.
“Our nation‘s commitment to the rule of law sets an example to the world,” Smith claimed last week. He might be correct; Smith just set an example for the Third World.
History teaches that those cheering the indictment of Donald Trump may one day find themselves the victims of the same cruel, relentless system. But that harsh dose of reality won’t rain on Jack Smith’s victory parade or dampen the spirits of the swooning spectators.
After all, every good Marxist loves a parade.