Jack Smith is trying to complete his mission of convicting Donald Trump.
He’s running out of chances to get the job done.
And an Obama-appointed judge handed Jack Smith one weapon to destroy Donald Trump.
Obama judge lays out path to convict Donald Trump in January 6 case
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case against former President Donald Trump over January 6 is ramping up again.
The case was paused most of the year while the Supreme Court considered Trump’s claim of Presidential immunity.
The Supreme Court ruled in July that the Presidents have absolute immunity for official acts committed while in office.
But it left it up to the lower courts to decide what is considered an official act by a President.
Smith filed a superseding indictment in the case that kept the same four charges from the original indictment but removed evidence that the Supreme Court ruled was protected by Presidential immunity.
D.C. District Court Judge Tonya Chutkan – who was appointed by former President Barack Obama – has worked with Smith every step of the way to help him get the case to trial as soon as possible and to get a conviction.
The judge now has to consider what evidence that Smith brought in his superseding indictment could be excluded because of Presidential immunity.
A court motion revealed how Chutkan could set up Smith to get a conviction if the case ever goes to trial.
She ruled against Trump’s legal team seeing more evidence in a 50-page motion that included an important legal nugget about the case.
“It is entirely conceivable, for instance, that Defendant could share responsibility for the events of January 6 without such express authorization of rioters’ criminal actions,” Chutkan wrote in her motion.
Chutkan lowered the bar for convicting Trump in a trial held in Washington, D.C. with a jury selected from the most Democrat-leaning city in the country.
Trump could be held responsible for the events and the actions of protestors even if he never told them to do anything illegal on January 6.
Jack Smith handed his path to a conviction
Chutkan also rejected a request by Trump’s legal team for foreign interference in the 2020 Election.
“Whether Defendant sought to undermine public confidence in the election to legitimize or otherwise further his criminal conspiracies does not depend on whether other nations also tried to achieve similar results for their own purposes,” Chutkan wrote.
The Obama-appointed judge ruled that Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco are separate from Smith’s office and that Trump’s legal team can’t request evidence from them.
Chutkan’s ruling means that Trump could be held responsible for any misdeed committed on January 6.
That makes a conviction with a Washington, D.C. jury inevitable with the case if it ever goes to trial.
A trial won’t happen until after Election Day, if it ever happens at all.
If Trump wins the election, he should be able to hold off until he’s inaugurated on January 20 next year to fire Smith and dismiss the case.
A loss in November means that he could be railroaded in a kangaroo court.
