Good day all. It’s been a while since I wrote about former Special Counsel Jack Smith. Well, more information has come out, most of which is pissing off Congress and might actually, finally, put Smith and a few of his minions on trial.
It’s taken a few years, but more documents have been delivered to Congress showing just haw far Smith and his band of merry miscreants went to get President Trump and anyone who was close or supported him. Here are the details from the Federalist:
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office analyzed the text messages of some 40-plus Members of Congress, with newly released internal documents indicating that the lead investigators ignored the established filter team review process — a process instituted to protect attorney-client privileged communications. Those documents, released Tuesday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, following whistleblowers tips, prove even more damning, though, to the special counsel’s brazen disregard of the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.
Smith didn’t disregard that section of the Constitution. He tore the whole thing up. Of course, he was just doing what his master, Merrick Garland, told him to do. To be perfectly honest, this who thing started with him. Garland’s appointment of Smith was illegal and unconstitutional and would have eventually blown up in their faces if any of these cases actually made it to trial.
On Monday, July 13th, Sen. Grassley made public a letter and records he obtained jointly with his colleague, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., as part of their oversight of the weaponization of the DOJ and FBI under the Biden Administration. That cover letter from the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs explained to the senators that Special Counsel Smith’s team had established a filter team intended to protect privileged communications obtained during the investigators’ targeting of Donald Trump.
And it looks like that “Filter Team,” was just for show.
While the filter team protocols provided that “[n]o materials shall be disclosed to the investigative team without approval of a filter team attorney,” the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs explained that documents uncovered based on whistleblower disclosures revealed that the special counsel’s office “apparently bypassed the Filter Team and directly accessed these text messages.” The “text messages” referenced were “text messages between White House personnel and several Senators and Representatives,” namely 44 different Members of Congress.
As I recall, almost every single one of those members was a Republican. There might have been a Democrat or two, but I don’t recall who they were or if this is actually accurate. You can add this to the subpoenas sent to the phone companies with orders not to inform Congress, which was a flat out violation of the law. (AT&T ignored the order and did inform Congress)
The Federalist story then goes into the details on how the process was supposed to work and how it actually did work. There was a team of lawyers who were not part of the investigation who looked at the text messages to determine if they were privileged or not. (Hint, if it was a Congressionally assigned phone, it was) It looks like Smith’s investigators generally bypassed that filter team.
The apparent bypassing of the filter team by the Special Counsel Office is but the latest scandal surrounding Jack Smith’s crusade against Trump — but it also represents only a portion of the problem revealed in the latest document dump: The records released yesterday show that the filter team utterly failed to consider the Speech or Debate privilege held by senators and congressmen
This proves particularly outrageous because Thomas Windom — an attorney working with Smith, who on May 27, 2022 coordinated with the outside contractor concerning the filter review process, had just ten days earlier been alerted to controlling D.C. Circuit precedent that requires Members of Congress to be given an opportunity to “identify and assert the privilege with respect to legislative materials before their compelled disclosure to Executive agents.”
This isn’t lawsuit territory, this is criminal charges territory.
But Rayburn went further and held that before obtaining access to legislative materials — something broadly defined in the law to include communications related to legislative duties — “a Member of Congress must be provided the opportunity to identify protected materials and assert their Speech or Debate privilege.”
As I recall, there was a Republican member of congress back in 2021 I believe, who was accosted by FBI agents who demanded his phone. I don’t recall if this was a phone provided by the Congressional tech services or if it was his personal phone. It doesn’t matter. If he conducted congressional business on the phone, then these jackbooted thugs didn’t just cross the line, they raced across it with a Formula 1 car.
Yet the special counsel’s investigative team apparently approved a filter team protocol that ignored any Speech or Debate privilege — even though they knew the D.C. Circuit required Members of Congress be given an opportunity to assert that constitutional privilege.
They knew, but they just didn’t care. All that mattered was jailing President Trump. That, or getting him murdered.
Not only did the special counsel’s office ignore the Speech or Debate Clause when it came to filtering material obtained with subpoenas, it hid from the courts issuing those subpoenas, as well as the accompanying non-disclosure orders, that Smith was targeting the toll records — and apparently text messages too — of U.S. Senators and Congressmen.
I wrote about this back in December. This was our old “friend,” James Boasberg. That scum bucket signed off on all the subpoenas and when confronted, claimed he didn’t know they were going after members of Congress.
With this evidence only now coming out, one must wonder what other rights the special counsel’s office trampled.
Oh, that’s easy. They trampled on all of them.
But one thing is clear: Sen. Grassley is wise to wait to call Jack Smith to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee until the Iowa senator has obtained all of the relevant documents identified by the whistleblowers.
Then, when Smith is called, they can walk him right into a perjury trap. Basically, the question will be, “Are you lying now, or were you lying previously?” The only way Smith can avoid hanging himself is to refuse to answer, citing his rights under the 5th Amendment, something he was more than happy to deny everyone he was targeting.
Now I do have a few questions of my own regarding these whistleblowers. While I can see them being attacked by the previous administration, I can’t see them facing any repercussions from President Trump, the Attorney general, whoever that ends up being, or FBI Director Kash Patel. In fact, I would think they would be escorting these people to the oversight committees. This might actually be happening, but isn’t being mentioned in the article.
Now the next question is, when are we going to see arrests? Yes, I know, I want to see Smith in an orange jumpsuit and shackles too. However, it takes time to build cases like this. There is so much evidence that was deliberately hidden by the previous administration, and who knows how much was destroyed to cover up their crimes, that when the hammer falls, the current DoJ needs to have everything in order, air tight, and absolutely solid.
What worries me is what happens if the Communists Democrats take control again. With the current crop, there is no question that they will tear up the Constitution and just start general roundups. They’ve said as much over the last few months. Smith, Garland and Wray need to be on trial before that happens, or the Democrats will move to protect them.
Thatisall
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