Good day all. Recently there was a Friend of the Court brief submitted to the Supreme Court that questioned the legality of the appointment of Jack Smith as a special prosecutor. The short version is that Smith was illegally appointed and that everything he has done to “Get Trump!” is garbage.
The Brief was submitted by former Attorney General Edwin Meese and several others. The case revolved around the Immunity of President Trump, and the court refused to hear it, sending it back down to the lower courts. Now those courts are looking at the original claim and is, apparently, looking into the actual appointment of Jack Smith. Here are the details from Fox News:
The federal court set to hear Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against former President Donald Trump has told the lawyers to be prepared to answer questions on the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment.
Ed Meese, former attorney general under President Reagan, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case against Trump on Tuesday, arguing that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith — a private citizen — is in violation of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.
“Not properly clothed in the authority of the federal government, Smith is a modern example of the naked emperor. Illegally appointed, he has no more authority to represent the United States in this Court, or in the underlying prosecution, than Tom Brady, Warren Buffett, or Beyonce?,” the brief argues.
I originally wrote about this just after Christmas. At the time, the case was refused and sent back down to the appeals court, which rendered the brief moot. I understood from legally minded people that this brief could be refiled, and I’ve commented that President Trump’s legal team should be reviewing it. Now it seems that the other shoe is dropping.
On Thursday, January 4th, the court issued an order that told counsel for both parties to “be prepared to address at oral argument…any inquiries by the Court regarding discrete issues raised in the briefs filed by amici curiae.”
Ed Meese, along with scholars Steven G. Calabresi and Gary S. Lawson, argue in the brief that “Jack Smith does not have authority to conduct the underlying prosecution.”
“Those actions can be taken only by persons properly appointed as federal officers to properly created federal offices. Neither Smith nor the position of Special Counsel under which he purportedly acts meets those criteria. And that is a serious problem for the American rule of law — whatever one may think of the Defendant or the conduct at issue in the underlying prosecution,” they wrote.
If anyone would know, it would be Ed Meese. He was the Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, the Greatest President of the 20th Century. There were several scandals that came about under Reagan and I think that special prosecutors were appointed. If so, they would have been appointed per the laws and Constitution, two things that Merrick Garland pays no attention to whatsoever.
While Garland cited statutory authority for this appointment, Meese said that “none of those statutes, nor any other statutory or constitutional provisions, remotely authorized the appointment by the Attorney General of a private citizen to receive extraordinary criminal law enforcement power under the title of Special Counsel.”
“Second, even if one overlooks the absence of statutory authority for the position, there is no statute specifically authorizing the Attorney General, rather than the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint such a Special Counsel,” the former AG wrote.
“Under the Appointments Clause, inferior officers can be appointed by department heads only if Congress so directs by statute… and so directs specifically enough to overcome a clear-statement presumption in favor of presidential appointment and senatorial confirmation. No such statute exists for the Special Counsel,” he added.
There is a lot of legal mumbo jumbo in the brief of course. I understand that Meese and the others also referred to John Durham’s appointment as how it should have been done. When Durham was appointed to look into the whole FBI investigation initiated by Felonia von Pantsuit’s fake Trump Dossier, he was already a United States Attorney and had gone through the confirmation process in the Senate. Jack Smith was a private citizen when he was appointed by Garland and never went through any form of confirmation.
There was an independent counsel statute that allowed for the appointment of special prosecutors and investigators, however, this law expired in 1999 and was never renewed. Both sides had grown tired of the abuses of the special prosecutors, especially the Democrats. As usual, they has rammed through the law only to see it used against them.
It will be interesting to see what the appellate court says about Smith’s status. He is definitely one of the reasons that the original independent counsel laws were allowed to expire. Smith’s ethics in previous prosecutions when he was a government employee have been repeatedly called into question. He has a history of abusing his office to go after Republicans.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of this. If jack Smith’s appointment is declared illegal, it basically blows up all the federal cases that weaselly piece of shit has brought against the Greatest President of the 21st century, Donald Trump. Even if Garland actually followed the law, (For once), and did appoint someone who has gone through the confirmation process, he or she would have to start from scratch.
As I’ve said many times before, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t play one on TV and if I had any power, I would change our legal system to emulate the late Frank Herbert’s Gowachin legal system. (I really like the part where the winning lawyer execute the losing lawyer) In any case, if the court decides that Smith was illegally appointed, look for him to appeal that to the Supreme Court. On the flip side, if the court says “Hey, no problem!” then expect the Trump legal team to appeal. In any case, this will probably end up in front of the Supreme Court.
Thatisall
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