The leftist media lit up on learning about Special Counsel Jack Smith's indictment of former President Trump on Friday. The blame game was on, and Trump was to be blamed for everything.
Veteran political reporter Peter Baker of the New York Times said this: "The former president's efforts to defend against multiple felony counts by discrediting law enforcement pose a grave challenge to democracy."
That's right. In the view of the Left, Jack Smith, his boss Merrick Garland, the partisan Attorney General who appointed him, or President Biden, who stands much to gain from Trump going to prison, did nothing wrong in charging an immediate ex-president with 37 counts of criminal acts, sufficient to put him in jail for 400 years. Never mind that Trump is leading national polls for the 2024 race from both parties.
Here are six reasons why we think that Trump could come out ahead and deliver a fatal blow to the very Deep State that has taken extraordinary measures to hurt him, all under the vague standard of equal justice for everyone.
- The Presidential Records Act is missing from the indictment. Whatever Jack Smith claimed in his charge would make sense for anyone in America, but not for a former president. The PRA expressly allows former presidents to take material with them after they leave office. If the National Archives, the custodian agency for all official papers, sees that some documents should be returned, the two parties are supposed to negotiate a friendly conclusion. If the negotiations are unsuccessful, the dispute should be resolved in civil court. The fact that the PRA was omitted could draw judicial rebukes.
- Misuse of the Espionage Act. The intent of the Espionage Act is to punish people who engage in spying to the detriment of the United States. The law was used to charge Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who took over $1.4 million in cash and diamonds to trade secrets with Moscow. His sentence in 2002 was to serve life in prison without a possibility of parole. Jack Smith has charged Donald Trump with 37 similar crimes, although there is no evidence that Trump used the classified materials to profit materially. Besides, the Act has never been used against an ex-president since 1917.
- The fraudulent use of the "No person is above the law" standard. Jack Smith said in his address to the media, "Our nation's commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone." The problem with this assertion is that the world has seen how the Deep State has gone after Trump, often putting him below the law. The FBI conspired with the Democrat party to charge that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, which later proved false. Trump, twice impeached, has been the target of a 16-month investigation by the J6 Committee and is a defendant in three New York lawsuits, plus a Fulton County lawsuit. The New York judge in the E. Jean Carroll's allegation of sexual abuse in a Manhattan department store case raised eyebrows because the judge seemed predisposed to engineer a verdict against Trump.
- If anything, these constant attacks against one individual duly elected to the 45th presidency are likely to make Trump a martyr, as we predicted last summer when the FBI raided his residence.
- Biden has proven himself to be above the law. The same Deep State that has gone after Trump has taken a kid's glove approach to President Biden's legal troubles, including the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and Biden's own problems with classified documents when he was President Obama's VP.
- Jack Smith's record in the Supreme Court is weak. Any verdict in the Trump case will ultimately make it to the United States Supreme Court. For a prosecutor lionized by the Left, Smith's arguments were routed in the Supreme Court 9-0 in McDonnell v. United States, in a conviction under the Hobbs Act.
- This case will likely be settled in the Supreme Court in Trump's favor. The John Roberts Court has repeatedly proven that its decisions are very political. Suppose a guilty case against Trump is upheld in lower courts. In that case, the justices know that future administrations can target their political opponents for so-called "process crimes," reducing America to a banana republic.
The waters are genuinely uncharted, thanks to an overzealous and partisan DOJ. No one can predict the future, but contrary to the Left's initial frenzy, the whole saga could reelect Trump as the 47th president.
Related tippinsights editorials:
Deep State vs. Trump: Persecution Through Prosecution
5 Reasons Why Merrick Garland Must Stop Lawfare Against Trump
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