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Jack Smith tells lawmakers his team developed 'proof beyond a reasonable doubt' against Trump (apnews.com)
submitted 3 months ago by pelespirit@sh.itjust.works to c/politics@sh.itjust.works
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Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers in a closed-door interview on Wednesday that his team of investigators “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump had criminally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to portions of his opening statement obtained by The Associated Press.

He also said investigators had accrued “powerful evidence” that Trump broke the law by hoarding classified documents from his first term as president at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and by obstructing government efforts to recover the records.

“I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 election,” Smith said. “We took actions based on what the facts and the law required — the very lesson I learned early in my career as a prosecutor.”

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[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 70 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Man

I don't even know how to assign culpability in whatever measure to whatever individual person, but at the end of the day, these fucking clowns sat around with their collective thumbs up their asses for four years with all the power of the federal justice system to bring to bear onto the world's most provably guilty man, and they didn't accomplish a fucking thing. I don't want to hear Jack Smith say a goddamned word about how much they could have done. I know how much they could have done. The fact is they didn't, and all this present catastrophe is the result of them not doing their fucking jobs.

[–] Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 62 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I blame Merrick Garland for slow-walking the case and ultimately Joe Biden for appointing such a useless limp noodle to look "moderate" to people who would never give him credit for absolutely anything anyway.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The Democratic Party wanted to run against Trump again because that's the only way the neoliberals can sell their lesser evil horseshit.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Probably true. And they got their gift in spades after the last election. Any hope of pulling them to the left, because the party apparatchiks might lose elections if they don't start appealing to the majority of Americans, pretty much went out the fuckin' window now that the Republicans are historically unpopular forever. Chuck Schumer can relax and just point to Trump any time someone tells him he's in any danger.

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

LOL you still think you will have elections and that the orange paedophile will respect the results

It must be nice to be that naive

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

There are some comments in my history listing "cancelled elections" as one of the important reasons to vote against Trump, back before this whole thing happened.

My overall point here is that if anyone was thinking that refusing to vote for Kamala Harris was a winning strategy to "push the Democrats to the left," they got it catastrophically backwards (and yes actually the fact that we might not even really have elections going forward depending on how things go as a really important reason why).

[–] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago

Are you sure they're historically unpopular? I keep seeing people on Social Media go gaga for Trump and cheer on his cruelty to trans people

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

Remember the industrial scale quantities of sunshine they were blowing up everyone's ass about Merrick Garland and "the process", not to mention, Georgia.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Jack Smith is not the problem.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 21 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Like I say I have no real idea whose culpability applies exactly where and to what degree.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/timeline-special-counsels-probe-trumps-efforts-overturn-2020/story?id=101537003

So Merrick Garland shit the bed by, apparently, just doing nothing at all FROM JANUARY 2021 UNTIL NOVEMBER OF 2022. Then Jack Smith gets involved.

And then we're still talking to the grand jury in JUNE OF 2023. At that point, Jack Smith was involved, and had been for almost a year.

THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE

HOW DID THEY NOT UNDERSTANDING THAT ACCOMPLISHING THIS SHIT IN TIMELY FASHION WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN GETTING IVANKA FUCKING TRUMP TO TESTIFY OR NOT

I am sorry for yelling, but it's just a bunch of shit. It's important, one of the most important things for the world that could have happened between 2021 and 2025, and it was their job, and they fucked it up and slow-walked it, and we're all paying because of their dog shit ness.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I hear you, it’s just the case that legal processes take a really long time. This is where they should have looked like they were cutting corners, but judges are their own political party and they don’t like rushing things.

It wouldn’t be an issue if republicans respected the rule of law, but they absolutely do not.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is where they should have looked like they were cutting corners, but judges are their own political party and they don’t like rushing things.

Yes, but there are cases where things get hurried along. Judges grant emergency orders all the time for particular reasons. There are plenty of important cases that manage to take less than four years when it's fucking important.

They thought they could take their time and do things "normal" and complete, because Trump wouldn't come near power again. It was obvious even at the time that that was stupid and wrong, and failing to treat it as an emergency on par with September 11th or something was a massive fuckup born of complacency and timidity.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

No one ever went broke underestimating the American public, as they say.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

This just the same miserable excuse we were getting for inaction at the time. There were no excuses for it then, there are no excuses for it now, and engaging in excuse making for the failures of the Biden administration is exemplary of the definitive failure of liberalism.

[–] grue@lemmy.world -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Bullshit. He could've been plainspoken like this at any time, but he played coy about it instead out of some misguided sense of "norms" or "decorum" or whatever, despite having a front row seat to the slow-walking and obstruction and willful feigned ignorance of those above and around him.

He could've made the plain fact of Trump's guilt impossible to ignore, but he didn't. That means he shares the guilt. Is it the majority of it? No. But there's plenty to go around, and it is some.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Wtf are you talking about. Being “plainspoken like this” before trial is a great way to lose at trial. That’s why prosecutors don’t ever do it. Ffs.

[–] shittydwarf@piefed.social 12 points 3 months ago

For some reason they just decided that there was nothing they could do about this serial rapist/fraudster/literal traitor despite mountains of evidence. This one guy just gets a free pass, despite being one of the most heinous human beings to ever walk the Earth.

[–] galaxywolf@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

You are 100% right, they had all the evidence they needed and did nothing

[–] goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 months ago

Idk why anyone expected anything else when garland was made AG. Especially with how long it took to have the investigation started

[–] velindora@lemmy.cafe 32 points 3 months ago

Nothing will come of it

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Fox news: BOMBSHELL Jack Smith admits investigation was aimed at Trump!!

More misleading analysis after this word from our sponsor: Mein Kampf, Diapers for adults.

[–] ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.com 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Some of the comments out there on the AP site are painful examples of just how brainwashed some of the public are.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Oh wow. AP has comments now?

And yeah. I'd write them all off as bots, but the sections new enough that its probably new to spammers and isn't completely covered yet.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

It’s all painful. Every ad I see is painful.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago

Weee saaaw hiiim dooo criiimes.

[–] kmartburrito@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Thanks a lot for sitting on that and not getting across the finish line. You should shoulder some of the blame, Jack, for what's happened with this fuck stick.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

Yeah it was his sitting on it and not traitor trump assmunch Aileen Cannon.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

This isn't on Jack, at all.