Smith’s filing on Trump a “Cheap Shot” – per CNN

That’s not a headline I ever expected!

Special Counsel Jack Smith “bent ordinary procedure” to kneecap former President Trump after he failed to try the candidate before the November election, a legal analyst argued in a piece for New York magazine.

In Thursday’s “Jack Smith’s October Cheap Shot” essay, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig analyzed Smith’s decision to drop a 165-page federal court filing related to the issue of Trump’s immunity from prosecution.

According to Honig, Smith successfully received permission from Judge Tanya Chutkan to file a 180-page-long brief — four times the normal maximum.

“The larger, if less obvious, headline is that Smith has essentially abandoned any pretense; he’ll bend any rule, switch up on any practice — so long as he gets to chip away at Trump’s electoral prospects. At this point, there’s simply no defending Smith’s conduct on any sort of principled or institutional basis,” Honig wrote.

Not exactly a new allegation, true. But when even CNN is saying it?

In standard criminal procedure and under federal rules, a prosecutor first files an indictment, the defense makes a motion and then the prosecution responds to said motions. However, Honig said Smith turned these rules “on their head” when he asked Chutkan to file without a pending defense motion.

“Trump’s team objected, and the judge acknowledged that Smith’s request to file first was ‘procedurally irregular’ — moments before she ruled in Smith’s favor, as she’s done at virtually every consequential turn,” Honig continued.

Nothing like impartiality, huh? Smith did complain earlier that Trump’s comments could prejudice a jury (face it, the man is a loose cannon – I suspect the only ones more concerned over what he might say than the prosecution is the defense. So the big question would be “influence a jury which way?”)

Now, Smith is using grand-jury testimony, which often remains hidden at this stage of a case, and has drafted a massive document that “contains all manner of damaging statements about a criminal defendant, made outside of a trial setting and without being subjected to the rules of evidence or cross-examination.”

If ya gotta try someone in the court of public opinion, it’s usually because your case is fatally weak and you hope no one will notice.

Honig also claimed that Smith’s conduct violates core Department of Justice principles and policy.

Category: 2024 Election, Crime, Democrats