The Dictatorship
The GOP’s narrative around Jack Smith has become incomprehensible
ByAndrew Warren
Former special counsel Jack Smith’s public testimony Thursday should have been a sober accounting of the criminal investigations into President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Instead, the hearing predictably devolved into a scripted parody of reality TV.
The session began with a grandstanding opening statement from House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, followed by prepared speeches and hostile questions that not only ignored Smith’s prior testimony, but often ignored his presence altogether. For example, Jordan declared that Smith’s investigation was “always about politics” without offering a shred of evidence.
Over the course of five hours, Republicans meticulously avoided discussing the substance of what Smith described as Trump’s “criminal scheme” to overturn the 2020 election. Rather than engaging with the evidence, they retreated into well-worn political grievances and attempts to impugn Smith’s character.
Smith’s multi-year investigations resulted in two federal indictments against Trump, convictions of nearly 1,300 Jan. 6 rioters and incalculable controversy. Thursday’s hearing provided a rare opportunity for transparency. It was a chance for lawmakers to scrutinize the evidence underlying the prosecutions, challenge Smith’s decision-making and confirm the absence of political influence behind the special counsel’s work.
Smith had long volunteered to testify publicly, but Republican leadership initially resisted. The committee chose instead to have him testify behind closed doors, focusing on the alleged “weaponization” of the Justice Department under President Joe Biden.
During last month’s eight-hour deposition, Smith provided candid and detailed answers about the evidence against Trump for obstructing the certification of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, and for his mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Because the Republican-led committee already released the full transcript and video of Smith’s Dec. 17 deposition, the motivation for Thursday’s public encore was obviously political.
Over the course of five hours, Republicans meticulously avoided discussing the substance of what Smith described as Trump’s “criminal scheme” to overturn the 2020 election.
Both parties saw value in having Smith repeat his earlier testimony in a televised setting: Democrats aimed to showcase a methodical, evidence-based investigation, while Republicans sought to discredit Smith’s methods and rewrite the history of that day. (The Republican agenda was revealed by another congressional subcommittee — ostensibly formed to investigate “remaining questions surrounding” Jan. 6 — whose first public hearing last week was filled with false and misleading claims.)
On Thursday, Republicans continued the misdirection-driven circus. Republican committee members questioned Smith about subpoenaing phone records of certain Congressman, characterizing the tactic as illegal “spying.” However, Smith testified that the records were evidence of Trump’s attempt to reach lawmakers to delay certification. Furthermore, the subpoenas were approved by a judge and complied with then-existing Justice Department policy.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. — who is not a lawyer — argued that there was no criminal conduct if Trump believed he actually won the election, then didn’t allow Smith to respond and disregarded his detailed deposition testimony as to why this argument was not a legal defense to the charges.
Steering clear of any substantive evidence, Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas — who is also not a lawyer — advanced a fallacious argument that Smith’s appointment was invalid due to technicalities with his swearing-in.
All of this distracts from the fundamental principle at the heart of this: if a president commits a crime while in office, should they be prosecuted?
If the answer is yes, then the party in power should not matter. Inevitably, the president’s die-hard supporters will decry any prosecution as a “witch hunt,” just as many of their opponents may presume guilt before a single piece of evidence is offered. But that is precisely why objective metrics — the independence of the prosecution, the normalcy of the process and the weight of the evidence — matter. They are the tools we have to distinguish between a righteous prosecution and partisan retribution.
Smith’s use of those tools was not problematic or unprecedented. He was appointed as an independent special counsel — a customary practice since Watergate, even though U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon later issued a controversial and legally dubious ruling that the appointment was unconstitutional. And President Biden never directed Smith or anyone at the Department of Justice to prosecute Trump. In fact, Smith testified he never communicated with or received any guidance from President Biden related to the Trump investigations.
This all looks even more benign when contrasted with Trump’s own political prosecutions.
Any objective observer knows which administration has weaponized the DOJ for political gain.
Trump publicly demanded the prosecution of his perceived political enemies, effectively ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to target former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He removed the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, a career prosecutor who Trump had appointed, for failing to bring charges against Comey and James. In his place, Trump installed Lindsey Halligan — one of his former personal attorneys who had no prosecutorial experience — to make sure charges were filed. In November, a federal judge dismissed the Comey and James cases after finding Halligan’s appointment was illegal. (Earlier this week, a different federal judge issued a scathing opinion reprimanding Halligan for “masquerading” as the U.S. Attorney in violation of the November ruling. She finally resigned later that day.)
The Comey and James cases are only pieces of a broader campaign against the President’s critics. Trump’s Justice Department has reportedly launched criminal investigations of several political adversaries, including Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The DOJ has even targeted Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Governor Lisa Cook, apparently because Trump disagrees with their monetary policy.
Against the backdrop of these perversions of our justice system, Trump’s vitriol towards Smith — he has called him “deranged,” “a criminal” and “a disgrace to humanity” — is the ultimate projection: a man accused of breaking the law attacking the man responsible for upholding it.
Any objective observer knows which administration has weaponized the DOJ for political gain. Yet Republicans spent much of Thursday accusing Smith of disregarding prosecutorial norms, while ignoring the Trump administration’s flagrant violations of constitutional guardrails.
The hypocrisy is suffocating. It is unclear whether congressional Republicans are intentionally misleading the public to rile their base and appease Trump, or whether they somehow actually believe their own narrative, which has become nearly incomprehensible. It is a world in which Jack Smith and other career federal prosecutors are the bad guys, the Jan. 6 defendants who stormed the Capitol and attacked law enforcement are innocent victims of a government conspiracy (which somehow occurred during Trump’s first administration), and Trump is a bastion of normalcy working to restore the DOJ ‘s independence.
This hallucinatory spectacle raises a jarring question: are we still living in a reality rooted in objective facts, hard truths, and legitimate concerns about our republic? Or have we already succumbed to existing in a world where facts are elective, nuance is dead and 250 years of constitutional values are subordinated to Trump’s demands for political revenge?
This nation cannot survive without a shared foundation for truth. While disagreement about the meaning of facts can be healthy, propping up these blatantly false narratives is malignant cancer. Shifting how we view facts based only on what the president wants to be true makes progress impossible and provides an instrument for autocracy and repression.
If we continue to sacrifice the truth on the altar of a partisan charade, the decline of our democracy will not just be a storyline on our televisions: it will be our reality.
Andrew Warren
Andrew Warren is Deputy Legal Director at Democracy Defenders Action. He previously was a prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department and the elected district attorney in Tampa, Florida.
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday halted President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to create a federal voter list and limit who can receive a mail ballot.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, sided with a coalition of nearly two dozen states that challenged the Republican president’s order in granting a summary judgment. Her ruling applies to this year’s midterm election cycle.
Plaintiffs argued in two lawsuitsboth filed in federal court in Boston, that Trump’s order should be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. The judge agreed, saying in her ruling that the provisions of Trump’s order seeking to create a federal list of eligible voters and using the U.S. Postal Service to determine who can receive a mail ballot are “legally void” because they “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.”
It was the second ruling in as many days against executive orders Trump has signed seeking oversight of the nation’s elections. A separate ruling Wednesday prohibited an executive order he had signed last year that would have required people to show documents proving their citizenship when registering to vote.
Order targeted mail voting, administration likely to appeal
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, whose state was among the plaintiffs, celebrated the court’s decision.
“Millions of independents, Republicans and Democrats across Arizona have voted by mail for decades,” she said in a statement, noting that nearly 80% of ballots in the state are cast by that method.
Mayes, a Democrat, singled out military families, voters in the state’s rural expanses and Native Americans who cast ballots from tribal lands.
“Donald Trump’s executive order targeted all of these voters,” she said. “But today, the courts affirmed what the Constitution makes clear: States run their elections, not the President.”
AP AUDIO: Federal judge halts Trump’s election executive order seeking to create a federal voter list
AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports President Trump has suffered a legal setback for a second straight day in his bid to get oversight of the nation’s elections.
The White House stood by Trump’s executive order and indicated the administration would appeal the ruling. The order, said spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, “lawfully protects our elections, and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail in its implementation.”
The administration, in its motions to dismiss the lawsuits challenging the order, argued that the motions were premature and that plaintiffs lacked the legal basis to bring their claim based on the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
But in an interim order before Thursday’s ruling, Talwani said the motions pertaining to this year’s election cycle were relevant: “In light of the EO’s specific deadlines over the next three months, and the reality that elections will be occurring throughout this period with the November 3, 2026 midterm occurring in just five months, postponing judicial review is impracticable and may inflict significant hardship on Plaintiffs,” she wrote. That order denied the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the challenges.
Executive order sought to give Postal Service a central role in elections
Trump’s executive order, the second one aimed at elections during his second term, comes as he continues to raise the specter of widespread voting by noncitizens as a reason to change election rules. But states already have detailed processes aimed at keeping their voter rolls accurate, and voting by noncitizens has been shown to be rare. It also is a felony that can be punishable by deportation.
Trump issued his second order in March after a bill he supported to overhaul voting stalled in Congress. The order would have had the federal government — through the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration — create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters. It then directed the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list.
Election officials argued that it was ripe for abuse and could cause chaos.
The Postal Service has published a proposed rule required by Trump’s executive order in the Federal Register. Among other things, the rule would not apply to primary elections or overseas ballots.
Postal Service workers have pushed back against the order, saying they are not equipped to determine who is eligible to vote in each state. After Trump issued his order last spring, the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association said forcing its members into such a role “risks politicizing one of the nation’s most trusted public institutions.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat whose state was among the plaintiffs, said the executive order illustrated how Trump was attempting to “abuse power in previously unthinkable ways” to interfere in elections.
She said it “strains credulity” to think the U.S. Postal Service could set up a workable system for pre-screening individual voters to determine whether they would be allowed to vote by mail, adding that it would be “a shocking violation of American constitutional rights.”
The Postal Service did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment.
Trump’s second election executive order faces multiple legal challenges
The lawsuit seeking summary judgment was filed by Democratic attorneys general representing 22 states and the District of Columbia. Also signing on were attorneys representing Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, which has a Republican attorney general.
The states also told the court that the move imposes a costly burden on election officials to comply and would spread fear about the possibility of prosecution. Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer for the Trump administration, had argued that no one would be prosecuted for violating the order.
The other lawsuit filed in Talwani’s court was by the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups, which have sought a preliminary injunction against the executive order.
In yet another lawsuit filed against the executive order, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., in May agreed with the Trump administration that it was too early to block the order because it had yet to be implemented. That lawsuit was brought by Democratic and civil rights groups, which have appealed.
Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe BidenTrump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigationsincluding ones run by Republicansfound it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.
___
Barrow reported from Atlanta and Hanna from Topeka, Kansas.
California voters will consider a controversial proposal in November to temporarily raise taxes on billionaires after the labor union backing the measure announced Thursday it would forge ahead despite pressure from critics to withdraw it.
The proposal, backed by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 billion and who were living in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. The goal is to generate $100 billion in revenue, mainly to fund the state’s Medicaid system after federal cuts.
“I am all in on this,” union President Dave Regan said on a Zoom call, adding that opponents of the proposal are “totally out of touch.”
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and many traditional allies of the union oppose the measure. They argue it is a temporary fix for an ongoing problem and that it would push the ultrawealthy to leave the state, taking the money they would contribute in income taxes with them. Newsom, who is considering a presidential run as he prepares to leave office in January, has generally opposed tax increases during his time as governor.
A coalition of healthcare, education and housing groups — including the California Medical Association and California School Boards Association — banded together last week to fight the tax.
“The dangerous wealth tax directly threatens vital funding for education and schools, healthcare and clinics, public safety, and infrastructure projects by making California’s revenue even more volatile,” the coalition said in a statement.
Brian Brokaw, a Newsom political adviser who is leading a political committee opposing the tax, said it would “make California’s biggest challenges worse.”
“Driving away the state’s sustainable tax base for a one-time grab is bad policy and an even worse deal for 40 million Californians who will be left holding the bag,” he said in a statement.
Under the proposal, the state would spend the money generated from the tax over multiple years. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the proposal would generate tens of billions of dollars in the first few years, but that income tax revenues would subsequently decline by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Many of the Silicon Valley tech moguls who oppose the measure have already moved their assets to other states or threatened to do so to avoid the possible tax. They have also spent millions to try to defeat it.
Since the proposal was announced in October, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated $82 million to a political committee called Building a Better California that backs a variety of initiatives designed to blunt the billionaire tax proposal. It has raised more than $118 million, counting Brin’s contributions, from fewer than a dozen donors.
California relies on its top 1% of earnersfor nearly half of its personal income tax revenue.
The union offered to scale back its proposal last week, asking Newsom to back a 2% tax on billionaires instead. But the governor’s office said the lower rate didn’t change his stance.
The proposed tax may have piqued the interest of many Democrats because it comes at a time when they are particularly concerned about affordability, income inequality and federal cutbacks to government programs, said Martin Gilens, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“There’s kind of a perfect storm that sort of bolsters preexisting inclinations to be sympathetic to the idea of raising taxes on the well-to-do,” he said.
But there’s a catch. Support for ballot initiatives often declines as the election nears, and if the measure passes, it’s likely to face legal challenges, Gilens said.
Since taking office one week ago, Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, has busied himself on social media posting flattering photos of President Donald Trump, trivia about a former counterintelligence agent and praising his current staff.
What the Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience has not done is address the public about his plans, or calm the unease and confusion inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is being described by top officials as “chaotic” amid firings of senior personnel with threats of more to come.
One image posted to the official X account of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, apparently artificial intelligence-generated, features Trump raising a clenched fist in the air with two B-2 stealth bombers in the sky behind him. Another is an image of the president, his fist clenched, glowering as he stands behind the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk.
In another post, Pulte, who was expected to gut the workforce of the National Counterterrorism Center, instead declared the staff there “true professionals and American patriots” after he said he spent time with them, adding “it is a privilege to work beside them.”
And in an apparent attempt at levity, Pulte reposted a message reminding Americans that Tuesday was “National Typewriter Day” and informing them of the role that a former Army counterintelligence agent played.
“Fun CI fact,” the post reads. “Former Army CI Special Agent Leroy Anderson composed ‘The Typewriter’ on October 9, 1950.”
But Pulte’s arrival has sparked anxiety and fear among the office’s workforce, three former U.S. intelligence officials told MS NOW, granted anonymity to address a sensitive topic.
They said that a half dozen political appointees were removed from their posts and several dozen staffers were sent back to their home intelligence agencies. Beyond that, little else is known about Pulte’s plans.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MS NOW that his requests for more information from the office, known by the acronym ODNI, have been rebuffed.
“I’ve been calling over there all day and can’t get my calls returned,” said Himes.
He later said, “I spoke directly to their office of congressional affairs. They said they had nothing for me.”
“It seems like it’s totally chaotic at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on a podcast Wednesday. “There was word that there was going to be firings and then he said he changed his mind. We don’t know.”
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA official and now an MS NOW contributor, said that staff in the intelligence community do not know what to think.
“Everyone is in the same boat and unsure of what is going on,” he said. “That said, there is no love lost for the DNI, as many believe that there is redundancy that does need to be cut.”
The other former U.S. intelligence officials said they agree that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in need of reform. The agency was created after a lack of information sharing among U.S. intelligence agencies played a role in the failure to stop the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ODNI’s mission is to ensure that the country’s now 18 different intelligence agencies share information with one another.
But the former intelligence officials said Pulte is patently unqualified to design or carry out those reforms.
“As with many things Trump alights upon, there is a sliver of truth here but he goes about addressing it in the worst possible way,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW, granted anonymity over concerns of retaliation. “But mass firings without any kind of sense of what you are trying to accomplish is addressing it in the most ham-handed way.”
That former official, as well as Warner and Himes, have said they fear that Pulte’s mission is to use his position as the nation’s top intelligence official to help Trump interfere in the midterm elections in November.
Pulte, who simultaneously serves as the Trump administration’s top federal housing official as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, used government mortgage information to file several criminal referrals against Democrats whom Trump considered enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff of California and New York State Attorney General Letitia James. None of Pulte’s referrals have resulted in criminal convictions.
One fear expressed by Warner and some former intelligence officials is that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates.
One way he could do that, they say, is by falsely claiming foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats. And Pulte and FBI agents could seize voting machines, ballots and election records in November — as Gabbard did in Fulton County, Georgia, last year at Trump’s behest — as part of voter fraud investigations that please the president.
“I have to tell you, I was extraordinarily concerned about the former director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, interfering in our election,” Warner told NPR earlier this month. “The concerns I had with Tulsi Gabbard now, upon reflection, look small versus the concerns I have with Bill Pulte.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
- The “Pride Match” that wasn’t
- Congressional Black Caucus blasts Slotkin over her calls for new leadership in the House
- Why Belgium’s prime minister isn’t cheering on the Red Devils
- Key Democrats urge House to reject kids’ safety proposal
- World Cup match collides with Florida GOP bash
- A drag queen, a rainbow festival and a game FIFA can’t control
- Envoy’s pharaoh well party
- The world’s not big on the US. The World Cup might help.
- Judge halts executive order seeking to create federal voter list…
- Pete Buttigeig says he was targeted by false abuse allegation in Michigan
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship10 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words