Weaponization Committee Hearing Witness Trashes Trump Special Counsel Jack Smith

7 months ago

At a House Weaponization Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) questioned witnesses on lawfare tactics.

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Transcript

00:00 I think the chairman.

00:04 Mr. Trustee, is it true or do you believe, I'm going to ask you to speculate on something,

00:10 that some of these cases are going to get overturned even if they do get a prosecution

00:15 in their current venue?

00:16 Yeah, I do think that when prosecutors are being inventive for historically important

00:21 prosecutions that they can collapse of their own weight.

00:25 And maybe that is for misconduct in Georgia, maybe that's for a novel felonization of misdemeanors

00:31 in New York.

00:32 But I do think that it puts a lot of pressure on the appellate courts, but they may well

00:35 get to that point where trial judges go along with the game, but the appellate court does

00:40 not.

00:41 So isn't it a characteristic of law fairs sometimes that you don't really care how the

00:45 case is going to end up, that the process is the punishment?

00:48 Sure.

00:49 I mean, look, for any client, it is strain and stressful to go through an accusation

00:54 and a trial.

00:55 It can be particularly maddening when you're running for president to be going through

00:58 that, to be tied up in New York courtrooms for most of the day.

01:01 So yeah, it is, there's a win without a win for the proponents of law fairs sometimes.

01:08 Mr. Hamilton, I want to talk about the special counsel office in general.

01:14 The appointments clause of the constitution says the president shall nominate and with

01:18 the advice and consent of Senate shall appoint ambassadors of the public ministers and counsels,

01:24 judges of the Supreme court and all other officers of the United States.

01:29 Are U.S. attorneys nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate according to the

01:33 appointments clause?

01:34 In fact, they are.

01:36 U.S. attorneys are held to the appointments clause because they are delegated some part

01:40 of the sovereign power of the United States.

01:43 Such as the ability to make indictments and charge individuals with crimes.

01:48 Was Jack Smith nominated by president Biden or confirmed by the Senate?

01:52 He was not.

01:54 He was merely given the powers of the special counsel by the attorney, by attorney general

01:58 Garland, wasn't he?

02:00 Correct.

02:01 I, you know, I think it's kind of a fallacy that we, you know, Congress can create this

02:06 special office and that it will be free of any political bias.

02:14 Do you believe that special counsel Jack Smith is acting independently of the White House?

02:20 Absolutely not.

02:21 And what, what leads you to believe that he's not?

02:24 So it's not only the novel application of some of these statutes to former president

02:31 Trump, twisting statutes that this Congress wrote, twisting the meaning of plain language

02:36 of sections like 1512 C interpreting the presidential records act in a way that precludes Donald

02:43 Trump from deciding which records are his.

02:45 There's all kinds of different things that he's doing, but I would say that the way,

02:50 the manner in which they, they they've been acting as my colleagues on this panel have

02:54 testified to the manner in which they have conducted themselves in their investigation,

02:59 every step along the way, whether it's cataloging evidence or whether it's statements to the

03:03 court and everything in between, Jack Smith is acting like a partisan hack and he has

03:10 a record of that doing so in the past.

03:14 And you know, according to reporting Jay Brat, a top aide to special counsel, Jack Smith

03:19 met with white house officials multiple times, including just weeks before special counsel

03:24 Smith indicted president Trump.

03:27 I mean, it's hard to say that he's independent if these meetings are in fact going on, isn't

03:32 it?

03:33 That's correct.

03:34 Uh, I mean, I think maybe we need a hearing later on to talk about this office itself

03:39 and how it's been weaponized.

03:40 I'm going to yield the room, my remaining time to the chairman.

03:43 I think the gentleman for yielding Mr. Trustee, you've talked about earlier, uh, Jack Smith's

03:47 obsession with getting this trial done before in a speedy fashion, I think before the election

03:51 is, is, I mean, it seems to me, um, that in and of itself, all of them are concerned.

03:57 These, these trials may not happen before the, why does that matter?

04:00 Let's let's, we want, we want justice done, right?

04:03 That should be the focus, not, not something, some artificial timeline.

04:07 I think the speedy trial demand betrayed the political underpinning of the entire process.

04:11 There's no reason for a federal prosecutor with a non incarcerated defendant to say anything.

04:16 And if I could just for a quick sec, the, the model here, there was a real obvious model

04:19 that would have given us all more faith in this process.

04:23 That is full transparency on behalf of the department of justice coming into court and

04:27 saying, we're turning over everything in discovery.

04:29 We're ready for trial, but judge, you tell us we'll show up and we need to show up.

04:33 We're here for small J justice, not capital J justice.

04:36 As we used to say at DOJ, that's the problem, that model of transparency and openness, not

04:41 fighting special master supervision, not appealing everything, not trashing judge Cannon in Florida.

04:47 That's what we could have had some respect for in some belief that the process is playing

04:50 out fairly.

04:51 You only bring charges after he announces for president.

04:57 Then of course you want the trials before the election.

05:00 That seems so obvious, I think to anyone with common sense, that's what they're trying to

05:04 do.

05:05 Now, the good news is it's all falling apart.

05:06 It's all falling apart, which when you have these kinds of cases, maybe that's, that's

05:11 That's what we should have probably expected in the end.

Weaponization Committee Hearing Witness Trashes Trump Special Counsel Jack Smith

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