#US special counsel Jack Smith

[t-jfh]

How do you imprison an ex-president with lifetime Secret Service protection?

If Trump is convicted, his Secret Service protection may be an obstacle to his imprisonment.

All former US presidents, including Donald Trump, are provided Secret Service protection for life — technically this entitlement and protocol applies, even if Trump were to be convicted and sentenced to prison or home confinement.

By Spencer S. Hsu, Carol D. Leonnig and Tom Jackman

The Washington Post - August 4, 2023

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/04/trump-criminal-cases-prison-secret-service/

This article originally appeared in The Washington Post August 4, 2023. It was republished in Australia by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age - August 5, 2023:

YouTube video >> Please Explain Podcast - Inside Politics: Is Donald Trump going to jail? [Podcast (televised) 4 August 2023 / 18mins.+35secs.]:

From the newsrooms of The Age and SMH, Please Explain Podcast provides daily insight to the stories that drive the world.

On Tuesday 1 August 2023 in the Federal District Court in Washington DC, special counsel Jack Smith filed an indictment against former US president Donald Trump, for his role in the violent aftermath of the 2020 US election.

Trump faces four criminal charges related to alleged conspiracies to overturn the results of the 2020 election and obstruct the process of certification of those results on January 6 2021, the day of the violent Capitol riot.

If convicted, Trump could potentially go to jail for decades.

Please Explain Podcast host Jacqueline Maley talks with North America correspondent Farrah Tomazin and international editor Peter Hatcher on the latest charges against Donald Trump.

Try looking at the Trump legal saga without congratulating yourself.

How the Modern Meritocracy made Trump inevitable.

By David Brooks

This article originally appeared in The New York Times August 2, 2023. It was republished in Australia by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age - August 7, 2023:

[reasonsforhope]

HOLY SHIT THEY DID IT

TRUMP HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH SEVEN COUNTS OF FEDERAL CRIMES

"Donald Trump said Thursday [June 8th] that he has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, igniting a federal prosecution that is arguably the most perilous of multiple legal threats against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House.

The Justice Department did not immediately publicly confirm the indictment. But two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly said that the indictment included seven criminal counts...

The indictment enmeshes the Justice Department in the most politically explosive prosecution in its long history. Its first case against a former president upends a Republican presidential primary that Trump is currently dominating, and any felony charges would raise the prospect of a yearslong prison sentence...

The indictment arises from a monthslong investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into whether Trump broke the law by holding onto hundreds of documents marked classified at his Palm Beach property, Mar-a-Lago, and whether Trump took steps to obstruct the government’s efforts to recover the records.

Prosecutors have said that Trump took roughly 300 classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, including some 100 that were seized by the FBI last August in a search of the home that underscored the gravity of the Justice Department’s investigation...

The investigation had simmered for months before bursting into front-page news in remarkable fashion last August. That’s when FBI agents served a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago and removed 33 boxes containing classified records, including top-secret documents stashed in a storage room and desk drawer and commingled with personal belongings. Some records were so sensitive that investigators needed upgraded security clearances to review them, the Justice Department has said."

-via WTOP News, June 8, 2023

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A federal judge on Monday dismissed the classified documents case against Donald Trump, a shock ruling that clears away one of the major legal challenges facing the former president.

In a 93-page ruling, District Judge Aileen Cannon said the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution. She did not rule on whether Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents was proper or not.

“In the end, it seems the Executive’s growing comfort in appointing ‘regulatory’ special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny,” Cannon wrote.

The ruling by Cannon, a judge Trump appointed in 2020, comes on the first day of the Republican National Convention. Even though a trial before the presidential election was considered highly unlikely, many legal experts had viewed the classified documents case as the strongest one of the four cases that were pending against the former president.

The White House referred requests for comment to the Justice Department. Smith’s office has not responded to a call for comment.

Smith had charged Trump last year with taking classified documents from the White House and resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials. He pleaded not guilty.

In a separate criminal case brought by Smith against Trump in Washington, DC, the special counsel was pursuing federal charges stemming from Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump also faces a state-level election subversion case in Georgia and he was convicted of state crimes in New York earlier this year for his role in a hush money payment scheme before the 2016 election.

Trump’s efforts to dismiss the case under the appointments clause was seen as a long shot, as several special counsels – even during his own presidential administration – were run the same way.

But the fringe argument gained steam when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas threw his support behind the theory, writing in a footnote in the high court’s presidential immunity decision that there are “serious questions whether the Attorney General has violated that structure by creating an office of the Special Counsel that has not been established by law. Those questions must be answered before this prosecution can proceed.”

Still, Cannon held a hearing on the issue several weeks ago, pushing attorneys to explain exactly how Smith’s investigation into Trump was being funded. The judge’s questions were so pointed that special counsel attorney James Pearce argued that, even if Cannon were to throw out the case due to an appointments clause issue, the Justice Department was “prepared” to fund Smith’s cases through trial if necessary.

Cannon said in her order that the special counsel’s position “effectively usurps” Congress’ “important legislative authority” by giving it to the head of a department – DOJ, in this case – to appoint such an official.

“If the political branches wish to grant the Attorney General power to appoint Special Counsel Smith to investigate and prosecute this action with the full powers of a United States Attorney, there is a valid means by which to do so,” she wrote.

COULD CASE BE REVIVED?

Cannon said in her ruling Monday that the Justice Department “could reallocate funds to finance the continued operation of Special Counsel Smith’s office,” but said it’s not yet clear whether a newly-brought case would pass legal muster.

“For more than 18 months, Special Counsel Smith’s investigation and prosecution has been financed by substantial funds drawn from the Treasury without statutory authorization, and to try to rewrite history at this point seems near impossible,” Cannon wrote. “The Court has difficulty seeing how a remedy short of dismissal would cure this substantial separation-of-powers violation, but the answers are not entirely self-evident, and the caselaw is not well developed.”

She noted in her ruling that Smith’s team “suggested” at a court hearing on the matter that they could restructure the office’s funding to satisfy her concerns.

[tomorrowusa]

Trump has some new bathroom reading to make up for the nuclear secrets and classified documents taken back by the feds.

Special counsel continues to schedule witness interviews even as potential Trump indictment looms

Georgia Supreme Court rejects Trump attempt to derail Fulton County election probe

[jonostroveart]

Ding Don and Margezilla

[originalleftist]

Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed a new, superseding indictment of Trump in the January 6th case, to address the Presidential Immunity ruling.

Go get him, Jack.

[sachyriel]

‘Most bizarre order I’ve ever seen’: Lawyers were absolutely astonished by Mar-a-Lago judge’s latest move, and some are urging Jack Smith to seek ‘extraordinary remedy’

Lawyers were left scratching their heads over the Mar-a-Lago trial judge’s Monday order asking the prosecution and defense to propose jury instructions under the assumption that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) allowed former Donald Trump to unilaterally decide that classified documents were personal.

"This is my emotional support nuclear secret, you can't take it from me. I told them, I told them I told them if they took my emotional support secret I'd sue them so hard they'd end up underground. Next to my ex-wife Ivanka. I mean Ivana."

Unsurprisingly, the reaction to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order was swift and unequivocal, with some pointing out that likelihood of acquittal has gone up. Conservative lawyer George Conway called the order the “most bizarre” he’s ever seen a federal judge docket, leapfrogging two other orders Cannon has already issued in the case.

George Conway, famous forbeing married to Kellyanne Conway. They've since divorced, but now that she's on the market Bil Maher isn't interested anymore. I could have done this in the Trump voice, like complaining about Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Too much Trump voice, gotta use it sparingly.

“In the decades that I have been a lawyer, this is the most bizarre order I’ve ever seen issued by a federal judge,” Conway said. “What makes that all the more amazing is that the second and third most bizarre orders I’ve ever seen in federal court were also issued by Judge Cannon in this case.” Conway’s criticism was in response to a post by former Obama administration “Ethics Czar” Norm Eisen, who wrote that the order was “clumsy & amateurish” and ignored the “different body of law” that governs classified documents, “including EO 13526.”

If it's stupid and works it's not stupid. For Cannon's purposes of getting Trump off the hook for his illegal actions she has to thread the needle of making it look plausible his defence found a way to argue their way out of trouble. The problem is we can see her signalling them what she wants them to do. If it's stupid and doesn't work then you can reduce it like a fraction where the denominator is one.

Since a motion hearing last week, Cannon has rejected Trump’s motion to dismiss on grounds of Espionage Act “unconstitutional vagueness” — without prejudice, meaning the defense can raise it again later and “as appropriate in connection with jury-instruction briefing and/or other appropriate motions.” But the judge has not yet ruled on the other argued motion to dismiss, under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

"Only Trump is allowed to be unconstitutionally vague" rules Judge Cannon. On one hand yeah I'd also want the laws I'm being prosecuted under to not be vague, but on the other Trump's being constitutionally vague when he tries to argue that the President is not an officer of the USA.

When special counsel Jack Smith submitted his arguments, he, like Eisen, emphasized that executive order 13526 — “in force throughout Trump’s Presidency and through the allegations in the Superseding Indictment” — states that classified materials “can be accessed only by a person who an appropriate United States official determines is eligible for such access; who has signed an approved non-disclosure agreement; and who has a ‘need to know’ the classified information.” “Under the provisions of EO 13526, the Superseding Indictment alleges, once Trump left office, he no longer had authorization to possess classified information, he never received a waiver entitling him, as a former President, to possess it, and he stored documents at a location that was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents,” the special counsel said, rejecting the notion that the PRA allowed Trump to declare, by fiat, that national defense information documents were merely personal belongings.

Donald Trump's Mind Powers Under The Microscope: Does this look funny to you? (I almost went with "do they pass the sniff test?" but what kind of microscope is that?).

Now, Cannon has ordered the defense and the prosecution to file, by April 2, “proposed jury instructions limited to the essential elements” of the 32 willful retention of national defense information counts Trump faces — but in light of the PRA. She ordered the two sides to “engage with” two “competing scenarios and offer alternative draft text that assumes each scenario to be a correct formulation of the law to be issued to the jury [.]” The latter scenario would plainly pave a path for acquittal:

I mean every hates that she's making Jack Smith dig the grave for his own case, but on the other people are in favour of making Trump dig his own grave. Trump has to pay his lawyers to seriously consider scenario (a), Judge Cannon probably-maybe won't sign off on sloppy work. But if Jack Smith submits his first, they may copy his homework. If they ask for (and likely recieve) an extension, he will have filed and they get like an extra week to cheat off him.

The attorney reactions only amped up from here, with some suggesting that Smith may have enough to seek the “extraordinary remedy” of a writ of mandamus from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, a court that has had to overturn Cannon’s decision-making before.

That's just confirming your Pryors.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller’s ex-top lieutenant Andrew Weissmann said that mandamus should be on the table for Jack Smith after Cannon’s latest bit of “legal inanity.” “This is the kind of legal inanity that could lead Jack Smith to seek to mandamus Judge Cannon- ie to get the 11th Circuit appeals court to hear this and reverse her for the third time- which could also be the proverbial three strikes and you’re out,” Weissmann said.

That's too optimistic, I want the threat of the appeal to keep Judge Cannon on the straight and narrow so we can get this done. If the threat of the appeal means she has to follow the actual law I think it's better than starting over from square one and delaying it longer.

Weissmann repeated this on MSNBC. “There’s a reason you’ve never seen anything like it,” Weissmann said, before dropping two M-words: the first was “meshuggenah,” describing the order, and the second was mandamus. noun

a person who acts foolishly

offensive

a person who has a mental illness

Collins English Dictionary.

“Please draft a jury instruction assuming that the earth is flat. And the second one is please draft a jury instruction that the earth is square,” Weissmann characterized the order. “And so, the second M-word is mandamus. Mandamus is the ability — it’s not an appeal. It’s for extraordinary actions by a district court that so clearly violate the law that you can appeal it right then and there.” “What she did today is so nutty,” he added.

Scenario (a) allows Trump to argue that it's still a personal document, scenario (b) says it is because he says it is. One is giving him a chance to earn it, the other is handing it to him. That's why the Earth is Flat not a Square.

National security lawyer Bradley Moss, also appearing on MSNBC alongside Weissmann, cautioned against seeking mandamus right away. “So, Jack Smith, if he doesn’t take Andrew up on his idea of seeking mandamus, and I actually don’t think they’re going to do that yet, I think they’re going to try to fashion a response to this to basically say ‘Alright, judge, I’m not sure where you were going with that, but um, no, that’s not how this works. If you think that’s the state of the law is what you put in that second line item, that’s fine. Issue a ruling, grant Trump’s motion to dismiss, as he outlined it under the Presidential Records Act, and will take it to the 11th Circuit,'” Moss said. “But that’s an issue of law for the judge, that’s not an issue for the jury.” “There’s nothing for the jury to do with that instruction. If that is what they went to trial with, I was Trump’s lawyers I’d sit there and take a nap through trial, play Candy Crush, and then the moment the government rested, ‘I move for a directed verdict for acquittal’ because you can’t lose,” he continued. “Because the jury instruction automatically grants you a win.”

"If you think that’s the state of the law is what you put in that second line item" is where I think it hinges, IANAL. Scenario (b) hands it to him but even considering scenario (b) is innapropriate because it's instructions to the Jury. Cannon should just decide on it herself, the fact she doesn't is her trying to look impartial when she's in the bag.

Skipping tweets

Smith has already threatened to appeal if Cannon separately refuses to reconsider a “clear error” that could out government witnesses through discovery, but the judge has not made a ruling on that issue either.

If Trump gets to have his emotional support nuclear secret he's going to want to show it to the witnesses personally.

The special counsel made waves once before by seeking a rarely granted writ of certiorari before judgment from the U.S. Supreme Court on Trump’s claims of “absolute immunity” from prosecution in his Jan. 6 case, so perhaps the Special Counsel’s Office wouldn’t shy away from pursuing similarly extraordinary relief.

Let me know what you think.

[mylionheart2]

Jack Smith 🥂

[mugiwara-lucy]

One of the main reasons why I’m voting for Kamala Harris is because sometime within the next couple of years there will be two open seats in the Supreme Court.

Let’s not forget one of the judges that Trump appointed in his first term OVERTURNED ROE V WADE. And the old fucker BRAGS about it:

If he gets back into office, I’m sure we can all anticipate AILEEN CANNON being one of those Supreme Court justices. And if you all don’t know who she is, she threw out the case where Trump STOLE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE:

In a nutshell, if Trump gets into office, he will appoint two younger Supreme Court justices younger than Clarence Thomas, meaning the Supreme Court will be locked HARD RIGHT for AT LEAST 30 years.

By then, that means our potential children and grandchildren (if you even want to have kids) will have LESS RIGHTS THAN US.

Do you really want that?

That’s why I feel with Kamala Harris being President, we can BALANCE OUT the courts!

Please Vote Blue.

Thank You 🙏

[trumpbites]

For Trump, the Legal Shoes Finally Drop - The New York Times

For Trump, the Legal Shoes Finally Drop – The New York Times

Criminal Referrals: In its final public session, the Jan. 6 House committee accused Mr. Trump of inciting insurrection and other federal crimes as it referred him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. Cassidy Hutchinson: The former White House aide told the panel in September that a lawyer aligned with Mr. Trump had attempted to influence her testimony. A Diminished Trump: The…

[kp777]

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

July 1, 2024

A legal journalist described the liberal justice's dissent as "one of the most terrified and terrifying pieces of judicial writing I've ever encountered."

In her dissent against the U.S. Supreme Court's Monday ruling in Trump v. United States, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor listed several acts that she argued the high court's right-wing supermajority has effectively sanctioned as unprosecutable exercises of presidential authority.

"Orders the Navy's SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune," wrote Sotomayor. "Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune."

The high court's 6-3 decision along ideological lines granted former President Donald Trump "absolute immunity" for acts that fall within the scope of the "responsibilities of the executive branch under the Constitution," as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

The new ruling leaves it to the lower courts to determine whether the election-subversion acts for which Trump was charged last year in a case led by Special Counsel Jack Smith were "official" or "unofficial." The Supreme Court took more than four months to decide the case after agreeing to hear it, meaning Trump is unlikely to face trial before the November presidential election.

The Associated Pressnoted that the Supreme Court "further restricted prosecutors by prohibiting them from using any official acts as evidence in trying to prove a president's unofficial actions violated the law"—a move that Sotomayor condemned as "nonsensical."

While Roberts acknowledged that "not everything the president does is official," Sotomayor argued that the majority's expansion of "the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds" means that "a president's use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from prosecution."

"Whenever the president wields the enormous power of his office, the majority says, the criminal law (at least presumptively) cannot touch him," wrote Sotomayor. "Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law."

Sotomayor expressed "fear for our democracy" as she closed her dissent against the ruling by the Supreme Court's majority, two members of which have recently faced intense scrutiny and calls to resign for accepting lavish gifts from right-wing billionaires.

"Justice Sotomayor's alarmed dissent was signed 'with fear for our democracy,'" U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a statement Monday. "This is a blaring warning to voters of the anti-democratic forces pulling the strings both at the Supreme Court and in the Republican Party."

"Not only does this decision deprive the American people of knowing whether the former president is guilty of attempting to overturn the last election before they head to the polls in November, it also makes it much harder to hold a former president accountable for illegal acts committed while in office," said Whitehouse. "The far-right radicals on the court have essentially made the president a monarch above the law, the Founding Fathers' greatest fear."

Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the U.S. courts for Slate, called Sotomayor's dissent "one of the most terrified and terrifying pieces of judicial writing I've ever encountered."

Pointing to Sotomayor's dissent, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) wrote Monday that "it is a dark day for democracy when presidents can commit any crime they want in their official capacity, and these justices are bribed for their decisions."

"Coup attempts are not 'official acts,'" she added.

Also writing in dissent was liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who warned that "in the majority's view, while all other citizens of the United States must do their jobs and live their lives within the confines of criminal prohibitions, the president cannot be made to do so; he must sometimes be exempt from the law's dictates depending on the character of his conduct."

"Indeed, the majority holds that the president, unlike anyone else in our country, is comparatively free to engage in criminal acts in furtherance of his official duties," wrote Jackson, who criticized the right-wing majority's "arbitrary and irrational" attempt to distinguish between official and unofficial acts.

"It suggests that the unofficial criminal acts of a president are the only ones worthy of prosecution," the justice continued. "Quite to the contrary, it is when the president commits crimes using his unparalleled official powers that the risks of abuse and autocracy will be most dire."

[reasonsforhope]

Note: They're saying "alleged" because that's what journalists are supposed to do until there's a conviction. ABC isn't trying to cast doubt, they're trying to follow professional standards and also not get sued for libel.

"Former President Donald Trump, bent on staying in power, undertook a sweeping "criminal scheme" to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including repeatedly pushing lies about the results despite knowing that they were correct, and doubling down on those falsehoods as the Jan. 6 riot raged, a sweeping federal indictment alleges.

This is the third indictment faced by the former president, who -- as the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race -- continues to insist that the vote was rigged.

Prosecutors say the alleged scheme, which they say involved six unnamed co-conspirators, included enlisting a slate of so-called "fake electors" targeting several states; using the Justice Department to conduct "sham election crime investigations"; enlisting the vice president to "alter the election results"; and doubling down on false claims as the Jan. 6 riot ensued -- all in an effort to subvert democracy and stay in power.

The six alleged co-conspirators include several attorneys and a Justice Department official.

The sweeping indictment, based on the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, charges Trump with four felony counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights...

In the history of the country, no president or former president had ever been indicted prior to Trump's first indictment in April."

-via ABC News, August 1, 2023

WE FUCKING DID IT

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Jack Smith, the U.S. special counsel named to investigate Republican former President Donald Trump, has a reputation for winning tough cases against war criminals, mobsters and crooked police officers.

Behind the scenes, however, Smith's former colleagues say he is just as tenacious in his pursuit to get criminal charges dropped for the innocent as he is to win convictions against the guilty.

When Smith isn't busy competing as a triathlete in Ironman races, they said, he is working as a dogged investigator who is open-minded and not afraid to pursue the truth.

"If the case is prosecutable, he will do it," said Mark Lesko, an attorney at Greenberg Traurig LLP who worked with Smith when both were prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York City's Brooklyn. "He is fearless."

Smith recently returned to the United States after working from The Hague in the Netherlands since November while recovering from knee surgery following a biking accident, a person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November to take over two investigations involving Trump, who is running for President in 2024.

The first probe involves Trump's handling of highly sensitive classified documents he retained at his Florida resort after leaving the White House in January 2021.

The second investigation is looking at efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election's results, including a plot to submit phony slates of electors to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's victory.

Grand juries in Washington have been hearing testimony in recent months for both investigations from many former top Trump administration officials.

SEARCH FOR INNOCENCE AND GUILT

Smith, a Harvard Law School grad who is not registered with any political party, started as a prosecutor in 1994 at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office under Robert Morgenthau, who was best known for prosecuting mob bosses.

Smith's friends credit Morgenthau with instilling in him the skills that made him the prosecutor he is today.

"There was just a real emphasis, from Morgenthau on down, on not just going after convictions," recalled Todd Harrison, an attorney at McDermott Will & Emery who worked with Smith in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and later in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn.

"We were praised if we investigated something and demonstrated that the target of the investigation was innocent."

Once, he and Smith "spent the whole night making phone calls" after learning that a jailed suspect in one of their cases was innocent. The suspect was released the next day.

In 1999, Smith started working at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn.

He won a conviction against New York City Police Officer Justin Volpe, a white policeman who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for assaulting Abner Louima, a jailed Black inmate, with a broomstick.

Smith also won a capital murder conviction against Ronell Wilson, a drug gang leader who murdered two undercover New York City police officers, though a federal appeals court vacated the death penalty verdict.

In 2008, Smith left to supervise war crime prosecutions at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He returned to the Justice Department in 2010 to head its Public Integrity Section until 2015.

Most recently, he worked as chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo, and won a conviction last month against Salih Mustafa, a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander.

Moe Fodeman, an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati who worked as a prosecutor with Smith, said his former colleague is known for being methodical and thinking outside the box.

"He is famous for to-do lists," said Fodeman, adding that the lists would be filled "with ideas that, of course, you should do, but no one thinks of."

Smith is also known for being expeditious, and Fodeman predicted the special counsel's investigations involving Trump will probably move swiftly.

"He's not going to be dillydallying," Fodeman said. "He's going to get the job done."

[unhinged-jackles]

source

A target letter is a notice from the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal prosecutor that you are the target of a criminal investigation

Jack Smith is Special Counsel for the US Department of Justice

[simply-ivanka]

EVIDENCE TAMPERING? Jack Smith Admits FBI Messed with Boxes Containing "Classified" Documents They Seized from Trump at Mar a Largo.

In a motion filed late Friday, Department of Justice US Attorney in charge, Jack Smith, admitted the FBI "messed" with the boxes containing “classified” documents they seized from Trump and can’t be sure the order or the placement of the documents.