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Aw, jeez - where to start.Maybe somewhere near the beginning would be good. Like the note from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) that Jack Smith used to start the criminal investigation of President Trump's handling of classified information.Or, at least, what Smith says was a 'criminal referral' from NARA to begin crawling up the ex-president's classified wazoo.Turns out, that isn't what it was at all....QuoteNew documents first obtained by the Daily Caller suggest former special counsel Jack Smith may have misled lawmakers and the public regarding the pretext for his investigation into President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents.The documents reveal the National Archives’ internal watchdog did not consider its February 2022 message to the Justice Department (DOJ) about Trump’s possession of classified documents a criminal referral, contradicting Smith’s account of how the case began. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) case report from February 2022, obtained by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, notes that its message to the Justice Department was a referral, but not a criminal referral.......“The OIG determined that this matter and the other relevant matters be classified as -R (referral to DOJ for their assessment and guidance, not the same as a criminal referral for prosecution which is only done for criminal investigations),” the report first made in 2022 and edited throughout 2023 to include such information notes.FBI messages included in the documents show that the bureau first treated the missing documents complaint as a “spillage” issue with “little likelihood of being pursued as a criminal matter.”
New documents first obtained by the Daily Caller suggest former special counsel Jack Smith may have misled lawmakers and the public regarding the pretext for his investigation into President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents.The documents reveal the National Archives’ internal watchdog did not consider its February 2022 message to the Justice Department (DOJ) about Trump’s possession of classified documents a criminal referral, contradicting Smith’s account of how the case began. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) case report from February 2022, obtained by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, notes that its message to the Justice Department was a referral, but not a criminal referral.......“The OIG determined that this matter and the other relevant matters be classified as -R (referral to DOJ for their assessment and guidance, not the same as a criminal referral for prosecution which is only done for criminal investigations),” the report first made in 2022 and edited throughout 2023 to include such information notes.FBI messages included in the documents show that the bureau first treated the missing documents complaint as a “spillage” issue with “little likelihood of being pursued as a criminal matter.”
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.Republicans grilled him about his investigation of President Donald Trump, and it was not going well for him. But the Senate Republicans just revealed information from a whistleblower that should concern us all (even more than what we've already seen regarding this matter). Smith allegedly was collecting information on ordinary Americans who donated to Trump....According to the Senate GOP, the disclosure revealed that Jack Smith and his team collected 4,782 personal checks from Americans nationwide who donated to Trump and Trump-aligned entities between September 2019 and August 2023.
Looks like a crook.
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning, and Chairman Chuck Grassley wasted little time revealing new details about the extraordinary reach of the investigation that eventually became Smith's election case against President Donald Trump.The biggest revelation may be just how far investigators reached beyond Trump himself.Grassley said investigators subpoenaed 87 phones belonging to Trump White House officials and obtained records containing communications with journalists at major news organizations, including CBS News, CNN, Fox News, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Federalist. CBS News reported the disclosure live from Tuesday's hearing.That comes on top of the previously disclosed collection of phone records belonging to Republican members of Congress."In the end, Mr. Smith indicted one person," Grassley said Tuesday. "That one person was President Trump, but in the process, [he] successfully mapped out the Republican apparatus."Grassley said the Justice Department and FBI ended up possessing "reams" of personal information involving "thousands" of Republicans, material he said was not disclosed in Smith's final report.
Already in the crosshairs for spying on Congress, ex-prosecutor Jack Smith and his team monitored the activities of President Donald Trump’s legal defense team, journalists and campaign advisers using a pen register device that tracked the calls coming to and from his chief of staff Susie Wiles’ phone, according to newly declassified memos that reveal some of the FBI’s invasive tactics used to target Trump.Just the News reported last week that Smith obtained the phone records of several senators through a subpoena and secured a non-disclosure order from the court preventing the mobile carrier from notifying the lawmakers affected. One of those senators, Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., filed a lawsuit against Smith arguing his spying constituted an unauthorized intrusion into her civil rights. The latest memos, released by the White House Government Transparency Task Force on Monday, show FBI agents assigned to Smith’s team in a probe codenamed Plasmic Echo used a dragnet of data gathering tactics in the midst of the 2024 election to monitor phone calls, social media, political endorsements and other constitutionally protected activities in the name of determining whether Trump broke any laws when he brought classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after his first term.The three-year probe of the ex-president — which put Joe Biden’s administration in charge of the legal fate of his GOP rival in the 2024 election — was approved at the highest levels of the Biden Justice Department, including by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Christopher Wray, the memos show.
Revelations that the Biden-era FBI tracked Trump family travel and top aide Susie Wiles’ phone records received a blistering rebuke from a former top Democratic official who compared the behavior to Nixon-era abuses of federal power that surfaced amid the Watergate scandal.The FBI investigation codenamed "Plasmic Echo," later taken over by special counsel Jack Smith, examined Trump’s alleged improper retention of classified and national-defense material and possible obstruction. Records show agents tracked first lady Melania Trump's and Barron Trump’s travel while planning the 2022 Mar-a-Lago search and later logged metadata from now-Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ calls with attorneys, journalists and others."Julian Epstein, the former chief counsel for the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic bench, compared the situation to the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon."It’s hard to think of good justifications for this. To me, it feels a little Nixonian," said Epstein, who also served as staff director to Democrats on a second powerful panel, the House Oversight Committee."If this report is true, then it's pretty bad. If true, then those in charge at the time better have some darn good explanations for surveillance of family members and advisors talking privately to lawyers or exercising their free-speech rights with the news media," he said.
Since the left is not calling for Smith to be prosecuted for malicious prosecution, perjury, and everything else, I can only assume they consider such tactics to be permissible even if used against them.
