#dirty pool

Trump Weird News - Dirty Pool?

Publishing it makes a mockery of America’s adversarial system of criminal justice.

By Alan M. Dershowitz and Andrew Stein Wall Street Journal

The publication of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on his unsuccessful investigations of Donald Trump was lawful, but it shouldn’t be. It’s a fundamental violation of due process that undercuts our adversarial system of justice.

The pretrial role of prosecutors—special or ordinary—is to make a binary decision: to seek an indictment or not. If a grand jury hands up an indictment, the Sixth Amendment guarantees the defendant a jury trial at which he can confront witnesses against him and present exculpatory evidence.

Mr. Smith has no basis to declare that the evidence was sufficient to convict Mr. Trump. The standard for obtaining an indictment is probable cause, which means there is enough admissible evidence to lead a reasonable juror to believe a crime has been committed. Grand jurors aren’t in a position to judge the credibility of the prosecution witnesses since there is no cross-examination, and they don’t hear from defense witnesses or even know who they might be.

Mr. Trump can try to refute Mr. Smith’s conclusions by challenging their credibility and presenting contrary evidence. But Mr. Smith’s report bears the imprimatur of government, while Mr. Trump’s response doesn’t, even after he becomes president again. When charges aren’t brought or are dismissed before a trial, the defendant has no power to subpoena documents or witnesses in his own defense. And Mr. Trump gained access to the report at the same time as the rest of the public did, so that any detailed response will be delayed—during which time the public will digest Mr. Smith’s one-sided, specific report and Mr. Trump’s blanket denial.

Had this case been investigated by an ordinary federal prosecutor, there would be no published report. The same should hold true for special prosecutors. Any reports they write to the attorney general should be internal. That applies as well to Robert Hur’s report about Joe Biden’s handling of classified material, which also resulted in no indictment, and David Weiss’s report on Hunter Biden’s offenses, which resulted in indictments, guilty pleas and a pardon.

We favor transparency in government and don’t lightly oppose publication of a report. But defendants deserve protection here for the same reasons that grand-jury proceedings are almost always kept secret. Transparency must be balanced against other values, including fairness and privacy.

Since Mr. Smith’s report has been published, how should the media treat it? With the skepticism that rightly applies to half-truths. But many are acting as if it is a verdict produced by a fair and adversarial process.

Reps won all 27 seats … and Trump lost? Yeah, sounds believable.

[contentcards url=”https://www.dailywire.com/news/experts-listed-27-house-races-as-toss-ups-republicans-won-all-27″ target=”_blank”]

Did you hear that there were thousands of ballots with Biden filled out and nothing else?  It’s disgusting that the #theGreatResetwent to all this trouble to push a senile old guy to preach their agenda for them. Now, they are trying to steal the election from the…

Will his prosecution end up putting him back in the White House?

Wall Street Journal

By Kimberley A. Strassel

What’s that old saying about the “best-laid plans”? Democrats banked that a massive lawfare campaign against Donald Trump would strengthen their hold on the White House. As that legal assault founders, they’re left holding the bag known as Joe Biden.

In Florida on Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon postponed indefinitely the start of special counsel Jack Smith’s classified-documents trial. The judge noted the original date, May 20, is impossible given the messy stack of pretrial motions on her desk. The prosecution is fuming, while the press insinuates—or baldly asserts—that the judge is biased for Mr. Trump, incompetent or both. But it is Mr. Smith and his press gaggle who are living in legal unreality, attempting to rush the process to accommodate a political timeline.

What did they expect? Mr. Smith waited until 2023 to file legally novel charges involving classified documents, a former president, and a complex set of statutes governing presidential records. The pretrial disputes—some sealed for national-security reasons—involve weighty questions about rules governing the admission of classified documents in criminal trials, discovery, scope and even whether Mr. Smith’s appointment as special counsel was lawful. Judge Cannon notes the court has a “duty to fully and fairly consider” all of these, which she believes will take until at least July. This could push any trial beyond the election.

Mr. Smith’s indictments in the District of Columbia, alleging that Mr. Trump plotted to overturn the 2020 election, have separately gone to the Supreme Court, where the justices are determining whether and when a former president is immune from criminal prosecution for acts while in office. A decision on the legal question is expected in June, whereupon the case will likely return to the lower courts to apply it to the facts. That may also mean no trial before the election.

A Georgia appeals court this week decided it would review whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue leading her racketeering case against Mr. Trump in light of the conflict presented by her romantic relationship with the former special prosecutor. The trial judge is unlikely to proceed while this major issue is pending, and the appeals process could take up to six months.

Which leaves the lawfare crowd’s last, best hope in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s muddled charges on that Trump 2016 “hush money” deal with adult-film star Stormy Daniels. That case was a mess well before Judge Juan Merchan allowed Ms. Daniels to provide the jury Kama-Sutra-worthy descriptions of her claimed sexual tryst with Mr. Trump, during which she intimated several times that the encounter was nonconsensual.

Mr. Trump is charged with falsifying records, not sexual assault, and even the judge acknowledged the jury heard things that “would have been better left unsaid.” He tried to blame the defense for not objecting enough during her testimony, but it’s the judge’s job to keep witnesses on task. Judge Merchan refused a Trump request for a mistrial, but his openness to issuing a “limiting instruction” to the jury—essentially an order to unhear prejudicial testimony—is an acknowledgment that things went off the rails. If Mr. Trump is convicted, it’s also a strong Trump argument for reversal on appeal.

Little, in short, is going as planned. The lawfare strategy from the start: pile on Mr. Trump in a way that ensured Republicans would rally for his nomination, then use legal proceedings to crush his ability to campaign, drain his resources, and make him too toxic (or isolated in prison) to win a general election. He won the nomination, but the effort against him is flailing, courtesy of an echo chamber of anti-Trump prosecutors and journalists who continue to indulge the fantasy that every court, judge, jury and timeline exists to dance to their partisan fervor.

These own goals are striking. Mr. Smith wouldn’t be facing delays if he’d acknowledged up front the important constitutional question of presidential immunity, or if he’d sought an indictment for obstruction of justice and forgone charging Mr. Trump with improperly handling classified documents, which gets into legally complicated territory. The federal charges might carry more weight with the public had Mr. Bragg refrained from bringing a flimsy case that makes the whole effort look wildly partisan. And Ms. Willis’s romantic escapades have turned her legal overreach into a reality-TV joke.