#jack smith

Jay Kuo at The Status Kuo:

Six years after COVID-19 first appeared, Sen. Rand Paul is still trying to prove the virus emerged from a laboratory—and that Dr. Anthony Fauci is somehow responsible for it. On Wednesday, that effort arrived before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that Paul now chairs. Paul had subpoenaed Fauci, now a retired government scientist, to testify, and used a private diary he’d somehow obtained as further “evidence” of Fauci’s culpability.

Legal scholars observing the hearing saw a familiar pattern. Frank O. Bowman III, a University of Missouri emeritus law professor, told PolitiFact he had no doubt Paul and like-minded Republicans would comb anything Fauci said for the slightest hint of error or inconsistency and refer him for prosecution. That, Bowman said, had just happened to Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Once such a referral reaches the Justice Department, Bowman noted, it would be taken up by officials with a track record of pursuing the president’s political adversaries, pointing to the cases involving former FBI Director James Comey and former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Days before Fauci’s hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) formally referred Smith to the Justice Department, accusing him of lying to Congress about how his investigators handled lawmakers’ phone records during that same 2020 election probe. Smith’s attorney called the referral an effort to “weaponize the justice system” against “a career, nonpartisan public servant.” CBS News reported that legal experts doubt the case holds up at all. Given what had just happened to Smith, Fauci understandably met the Senate hearing with mostly silence. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 100 times, the first time in more than 250 congressional appearances that he had done so. Sen. Paul and his allies hoped this would show that Fauci has something to hide. Instead, it showed, at least to any fair-minded viewer, that the Republican Party remains morally bankrupt, even among Republicans who occasionally break with Trump, like Sen. Paul.

Paul’s case against Fauci ultimately rests on three separate, weak claims: that the pardon Fauci received from President Biden strips him of the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment; that Fauci’s diary documents a private belief in the lab-leak theory he concealed from the public; and that NIH funding produced the virus that caused the pandemic. It’s important that we dismantle these claims piece by piece.

Paul’s legal argument falls short

In his opening statement, Fauci laid out his reasoning before declining to answer a single question. He pointed to Paul’s history of publicly calling for his prosecution, his repeated public criticism and Paul’s decision to release his unredacted diary. He concluded that the hearing’s sole purpose was to get him to say something Paul could use to make good on his pledge to see Fauci “behind bars.” Fauci argued that anyone who had followed Paul’s “unhinged obsession with me” would reach the same conclusion. Fauci contrasted that accusation with his own institutional record, noting that in nearly 40 years as NIAID director he had testified before or briefed congressional committees well over 200 times. This, he argued, was a history that demonstrated his respect for legitimate oversight.

For every question that followed in Wednesday’s hearing, however, he gave the same answer: on the advice of counsel, he was invoking his Fifth Amendment right. Paul warned Fauci mid-hearing that obstructing a congressional investigation carries legal consequences and that there would be “repercussions” for his refusal to answer. Speaking to reporters afterward, Paul said he had hoped for something closer to contrition. He said he had wanted to hear Fauci acknowledge that judgment errors were made, but he heard none of that from the scientist. Democrats on the committee were not silent in the face of this assault. They defended Fauci’s right to invoke the privilege and used their time to attack the premise of the hearing itself. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called the proceeding “a perjury craft for criminal prosecution going forward” and agreed that Fauci invoking the Fifth was “the more prudent course.” Ranking member Gary Peters (D-MI) argued the hearing would discourage future public servants from taking on similar work, warning that “today’s hearing, unfortunately, does real damage.”

[...]

The documentary evidence is weak sauce

Paul’s campaign against Fauci rests on two distinct claims that often get conflated but ought to be considered separately. The first is a funding classification dispute, namely whether NIH-backed research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology met the government’s definition of “gain-of-function work” and therefore whether Fauci lied to Congress by denying that it did. The second is a broader allegation of concealment: that Fauci and his colleagues privately entertained the lab-leak theory while publicly dismissing it. On the first claim, the core disagreement is highly technical and far narrower than it sounds. Gain-of-function research refers broadly to laboratory work that deliberately enhances a pathogen’s biological properties, most consequentially its transmissibility or its ability to cause more severe disease. Congress’s own research service defines it as any genetic change, natural or induced, that confers a new or enhanced ability on an organism. The term entered public policy debates in 2011 over NIH-funded studies that made H5N1 avian flu more transmissible in mammals. Not all such research is regulated the same way; federal oversight has historically applied only to a narrower set of experiments meeting specific risk criteria, which is where the Paul-Fauci dispute actually lives. Paul claims the NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan and that Fauci lied when he denied it. Fauci’s position has been that the research in question did not meet the government’s formal regulatory definition of gain-of-function. During the Biden administration, NIH made a related argument publicly, saying the specific bat-coronavirus research conducted in Wuhan didn’t constitute risky gain-of-function work because the viruses studied were “genetically far distant” from the one that caused the pandemic.

That dispute over classification is genuine and unresolved. Paul has pressed it since 2021, and Fauci has denied it just as consistently. But it is a fight over how to label a specific category of research, not a fight over a hidden fact Paul has since uncovered.

The second claim—that Fauci covered up private doubts—is the one Paul’s newly released diary was meant to prove. The diary’s path to Paul’s committee involved a health secretary with his own history with Fauci. RFK Jr., a longtime Fauci critic, said he had located the diary on government servers after an eight-month search and handed it to Paul and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. Neither HHS nor Paul’s committee notified Fauci before releasing it. (Some ambiguity remains about the handoff. Paul posted the documents publicly over the weekend, took them down Monday evening and reposted them Tuesday morning with redactions. NPR reported it was still unclear, even after Kennedy’s account, exactly how Paul obtained the material in the first place.) In total, Paul published a 1,141-page tranche of diary entries, from December 2019 through December 2022, claiming they “completely undermine the official narrative that Fauci and other public health officials espoused.”

[...]

Paul’s science ain’t sciencing

Paul’s argument that Fauci’s private hedging amounts to evidence of concealment runs into pushback from scientists who study exactly this kind of early-pandemic uncertainty. Gigi Gronvall, a biosecurity expert and immunologist, told NPR that entertaining multiple origin theories privately while pandemic knowledge was still developing is not unusual. It reflects ordinary scientific practice rather than guilt. Felicia Goodrum, a virologist at Dartmouth College, made a similar point, describing the early questioning reflected in the diary as normal scientific exploration at a moment when very little about the virus was understood. It was not, as she put it, some signal of guilt that officials knew something they weren’t disclosing. Beyond the question of what Fauci privately believed, there’s a separate question of whether the gain-of-function funding theory holds up on its own scientific terms. Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University, disputes the theory because there is no actual evidence for it. He noted that no laboratory, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, possessed a precursor virus genetically close enough to SARS-CoV-2 to have engineered the pathogen that caused the pandemic. That assessment lines up with NIH’s own public defense of the research it funded in Wuhan: the agency has said the specific bat coronaviruses studied there were genetically far distant from the virus that caused COVID-19.

[...]

Where the threats stand

For all the legal and political pressure aimed at both men, neither case has yet produced anything more than threats. Paul’s own contempt effort remains just a possible referral, not a conviction. Rep. Jim Jordan’s referral against Smith carries the same limitation. Criminal referrals are recommendations, and ABC News noted that they do not always lead to prosecution. But with this Justice Department eager to advance Trump’s political agenda, the referrals feel more like cover for politicized prosecutions. These are both very stale allegations, and they are apparently being resurrected to find something to stir up the GOP base before the midterms.

Dr. Anthony Fauci = hero

GOP = zeroes.

See Also:

Rep. Jordan wants the Department of Justice to prosecute Jack Smith

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and lackey Jim Jordan checks another box on Trump's retribution list.

[Jack Smith bound with cement shoes done by Jim Jordan]

All of Trump’s minions really should be wearing mobster costumes

that "have have" should be "may have".

From bad to worse for Trump and the DOJ

July 24, 2026

Robert B. Hubbell

Trump is desperate for Senate Majority Leader John Thune to pass the SAVE America Act and is reportedly “running out of patience” with Thune, according to Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary. See NYTimes, Trump-Thune Rift Intensifies Over Stalled Election Bill. (Gift article.) Thune pushed back hard, saying that the President’s spokeswoman should “try to find the votes” herself to pass the bill. The Times notes that Republicans do not have 60 votes to overcome the filibuster (necessary to advance the bill to a final vote) or the 50 votes to pass the bill on a final vote.

Thune said,

Maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes. It’s 50 [votes] around here. And, so, instead of pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, which is the Democrats. And if there are Republicans that they think are gettable, get on the phone. Let’s get them to ‘yes.’

Trump’s desperate insistence that Thune pass a bill that has zero chance of making it through the Senate is instructive. If Trump’s secret plan were to use troops to set aside the election results as many predict, he would not need the voter suppression provisions of the SAVE America Act. The fact that Trump is publicly lashing out at Thune strongly suggests that Trump sees voter suppression—not armed interference—as his last best hope for interfering in the 2026 midterms.

To similar effect is the DOJ’s seventeenth loss (against zero wins) in legal cases in which the Trump administration is demanding that states turn over voter databases to the Department of Justice. See Democracy Docket, DOJ losing streak continues as Trump-appointed judge tosses Kentucky voter roll lawsuit. (The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) record in voter roll cases fell to 0-17 Thursday, when yet another federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump dismissed the administration’s lawsuit against Kentucky.”)

Again, if Trump’s plan were to overturn the midterms by force, the DOJ would not be seeking voter databases so it could engineer massive purges in heavily Democratic areas.

And if Trump’s secret plan were to overturn the impending blue wave by seizing ballots, he would not be contesting dead-bang loser lawsuits in dozens of states.

None of the above rules out the possibility that Trump will dispatch ICE agents to patrol heavily Democratic neighborhoods to intimidate some voters into remaining at home. ICE agents do not have to be “at the polls” to strike fear into voters who are subject to Kavanaugh Stops based on their apparent ethnicity, race, employment, or neighborhood.

As always, the complete answer to voter suppression is strong turnout. Voter suppression is a blunt instrument and works at the margins. Remember in November 2025 when the margins of Democratic victories were so large that Trump simply shut up about “rigged elections”—a false claim that he promoted until the polls closed on November 4, 2025.

Our confidence in pro-voting-rights attorneys should be growing by the day. The 17-0 winning streak against Trump shows just how good our lawyers are and how bad Trump’s lawyers are. Indeed, we received another reminder on Thursday that the DOJ is a shell of its former self. While some highly competent, ethical attorneys remain, Trump and Todd Blanche have purged the DOJ of hundreds of experienced prosecutors and division leaders. The partisan hacks who have replaced seasoned professionals do not have the experience, skill set, or intelligence to litigate sophisticated voting rights cases.

On Thursday, US District Judge Arun Subramanian reamed DOJ lawyers in the Southern District of New York for failing to advise the court of relevant facts and law in seeking subpoenas against New York Times journalists and their families. See Chris Geidner (Substack) Law Dork, Thursday was the worst day for DOJ.

I highly recommend Chris Geidner’s summary if you are interested in the details. Geidner provides a flavor of the hearing in the following:

It was an altogether horrifying appearance in court for Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley, as well as Kevin Sullivan, a lawyer in the office who was initially sitting in the gallery but who, Lee reported, [Judge] Subramanian called up to sit at counsel’s table because he was “on all the pleadings” . . .

Not only did the DOJ fail to advise the court that some of the subpoenas were directed at journalists’ family members, but DOJ attorney Sean Buckley also admitted he was unaware of the leading authority on subpoenas issued to journalists. Again, per Geidner, this devastating exchange occurred:

Judge: You were not aware of the leading case in this field? Buckley: No.

In the end, the DOJ withdrew the subpoenas due to multiple omissions and legal errors. After a completely embarrassing, devastating loss before Judge Subramanian due to the DOJ’s incompetence and bad faith, the DOJ criticized the judge after the hearing, alleging that the judge “threatened our attorneys with sanctions unless subpoenas were withdrawn, and blocked us from presenting the meticulous process of this investigation.” See Axios, Trump DOJ withdraws New York Times subpoenas.

The most charitable interpretation of the DOJ’s actions in the above case is monumental incompetence, i.e., not being aware of the leading case regarding subpoenas against journalists. While we cannot count on Trump’s DOJ to defeat itself, these and other incidents suggest that the shell of the DOJ that remains after Trump’s decimation is not up to the task of litigating against real lawyers.

Which brings us back to the opening paragraph of the newsletter: Although Trump is engaged in unlawful attempts to interfere in the 2026 midterms, his actions suggest that he is committed to using “conventional” unlawful means (unconstitutional legislation, illegal demands for voter data) rather than force. And the hostile reception that Trump’s illegal executive orders have received in the courts should be a sobering reminder of the likely fate that awaits more aggressive efforts as the midterms draw near.

Defense Department removes the names of four soldiers killed in Iran war because their deaths occurred after the so-called “ceasefire.”

It is difficult to understand how anyone in the military (or their families) can support Trump given the complete contempt with which he views members of the military. On Thursday, that contempt reached an apex when Trump removed the names of four soldiers from the list of servicemembers killed during the Iran war. Trump apparently ordered the Pentagon to remove the four dead soldiers from the list because they had the misfortune to be killed by Iran during a so-called ceasefire called for by the memorandum of understanding. See The Guardian, Pentagon list of service members killed in Iran war removes most recent four.

Per The Guardian, the list of soldiers killed in the Iran war listed 18 deaths on Wednesday, but

was changed on Thursday to exclude three service members killed last Friday, Saturday and Sunday . . The list also excluded a fourth soldier who was killed during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone at Erbil air base in Iraq.

Three military officials told the Times that “one reason behind the change was that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed this past weekend from the list … because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April”.

In a pathetic lie intended to cover for Trump’s contempt for the military, the Pentagon blamed the removal of four names on “temporary data disruptions.” If the Pentagon can’t maintain a list of eighteen names on a website, we are all in trouble. Of course, the Pentagon’s excuse is a lie.

The action by the Pentagon and Trump is an insult to the four soldiers who gave their lives carrying out the battle plan devised by a Fox talk show personality and the most corrupt president in our history—neither of whom is worthy to command the men and women who volunteered to protect our country.

Don’t worry about former special counsel Jack Smith; he’ll be okay.

Former special counsel Jack Smith voluntarily appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to provide testimony regarding his investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the 2024 election results and Trump’s unlawful retention of national defense documents. Predictably, Rep. Jim Jordan and other Republicans on the Committee have made a criminal referral of Jack Smith to the DOJ for investigation of perjury during his testimony.

Jack Smith was completely truthful during his testimony. If the DOJ obtains an indictment against Smith or attempts to prosecute him, the most likely outcome is that the DOJ lawyers involved in the bad-faith proceeding will be disbarred. For background, see ABC News, Jim Jordan issues criminal referral against former special counsel Jack Smith for alleged perjury - ABC News.

Per the ABC News article, Rep. Jamie Raskin said,

Jack Smith was clear and consistent in his testimony, and he told the truth. When asked if his subpoena for Members’ toll records sought the content of either Member’s phone calls or messages, he truthfully replied that they did not. [I]f ever brought before a judge, [the indictment] will get laughed out of court [and is] meant to harass Jack Smith.

While the actions of Jim Jordan and other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are outrageous, their actions are so pathetic they are embarrassing—and actually serve as a confirmation that Jack Smith testified truthfully.

Concluding Thoughts

The economy is due for another oil shock in response to the widening war against Iran. The price of oil once again topped $100 per barrel, and US domestic gas prices have spiked in anticipation of price increases from refiners. See CNN, Oil tops $100 a barrel, Houthi attack in Red Sea marks new escalation and AAA Newsroom, Gas Prices Keep Climbing, National Average Jumps 15 Cents.

Any rational president would take actions to cushion the blow to US consumers. Not Trump. On Thursday, he announced a new round of tariffs designed to circumvent Supreme Court scrutiny and replace temporary duties that are expiring this week. See Axios, Trump imposes new tariffs on 60 trading partners.

Tariffs are highly unpopular with consumers, retailers, farmers, and manufacturers who must pay more for imported materials and finished products on store shelves. Per the most recent YouGov poll (7/22/26), a whopping 72% of Americans surveyed believe Trump’s tariffs have increased the prices they pay for goods. See YouGov, Do you think tariffs imposed by Donald Trump have increased, decreased, or had no effect on the prices you paid for things that you bought? Only 3% of survey respondents believe that Trump’s tariffs have decreased the prices they pay for goods.

Here’s my point: At a time when Trump should be trying to soften the effect of his economic and wartime policies on voters, he is doing the opposite. He has provoked the re-closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the closure of the Red Sea shipping lanes that Saudi Arabia uses to bypass it. I described Trump yesterday as the Republican “anti-candidate” because he seems to be trying to destroy their chances of avoiding electoral disaster in November.

None of this means we can relent. But in a news environment crowded with issue spotters and professional alarm raisers, a little balance is appropriate. Things could be worse for Democrats. We could be Republicans running on a platform of broken promises about forever wars and prices going down “on day one,” and led by a president who seems embarrassed by soldiers killed in a war he started, who is so obsessed with his mistaken belief that other countries pay tariffs that he is willing to fuel inflation by imposing a retail tax on thousands of consumer items.

Arthur Delaney at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON ― Republicans in the House of Representatives on Wednesday told the Justice Department it should prosecute former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining lawmakers’ text messages in the course of his investigation into President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow his 2020 election loss. Trump has long dreamed of throwing Smith in prison as part of his quest for vengeance against his political enemies and his mission to turn the Justice Department upside down. On his website, the president tentatively hailed the referral: “Justice at last???”

In a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) claimed Smith made false statements during a December deposition with the committee when he said he had not sought a search warrant for lawmakers’ texts. Instead, Smith said he sought only “toll” records that showed the times of phone calls between certain lawmakers and White House officials. It’s not that Smith lied, Jordan contends, but rather that he made a false statement in the eyes of the law because he didn’t volunteer more information in his answer. “Under relevant federal statutes, a witness makes a false statement when the witness provides a half-truth or excludes information necessary to make statements accurate,” Jordan said in his letter to Blanche.

The Justice Department previously tried to prosecute another Trump foe, former FBI director James Comey, for making a false statement to Congress, a crime that carries a five-year prison sentence. The case was so weak a career prosecutor resigned rather than do Trump’s bidding, and then a judge threw it out because the replacement prosecutor was illegally appointed. (Now the Trump administration’s trying to get Comey for posting a photo online of allegedly threatening seashells.) In Smith’s case, Republicans obtained documents this month showing Smith actually did get his hands on text messages from lawmakers when his office asked the National Archives and Records Administration for presidential records that included texts between lawmakers and administration officials. So even though Smith truthfully said he hadn’t sought to obtain those records via subpoenas to telecom firms, Jordan contends, he misled the committee by not saying he’d obtained the records another way.

[...] Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the judiciary committee’s top Democrat, called the criminal referral an embarrassment. “It seems Republican Members of Congress are lashing out because they just realized their communications with the White House became presidential records preserved at the National Archives as required by the Presidential Records Act,” Raskin said in a statement.

not only did i but i got my boyfriend in on the action!

you were exactly right that Jack Smith is up my alley, the cinematography is incredible and the acting is really really good - just authentic enough to wibble the line between classical realism and camp while remaining firmly grounded in the narrative and character motivations . he really should have more of his films preserved and circulated, if i had seen flaming creatures at a more tender age i think it wouldn't have taken me so long to come out 💀