The Republican campaign against former special counsel Jack Smith is ongoing, and as the week got underway, the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee unveiled information it characterized as “breaking news” (complete with a red siren for emphasis).
The “new” documents were written correspondence, sent in early December 2022 by the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee’s leaders to the special counsel’s office at the Justice Department.
The letters “prove” that Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson and then-Republican Rep. Liz Cheney were cooperating with Smith, providing the prosecutor with “transcripts, documents, and text messages.”
Too often in contemporary politics, Republicans seem to operate on the assumption that the public has a very short memory, which leads them to pretend that old and dull information is new and scandalous. This is another such an instance.
The House Judiciary Committee’s GOP members didn’t need to prove the bipartisan leaders cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation because we already knew this.
In fact, I was one of a great many people writing about this at the time. The MaddowBlog post’s headline, published nearly three years ago, read, “Jan. 6 committee begins cooperating with DOJ’s special counsel.” I quoted a PunchBowl news report at the time that said:
Starting last week, the select committee began sending Smith’s team documents and transcripts. Much of the production from the Jan. 6 committee is in relation to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and John Eastman, the Trump lawyer at the center of the ‘fake elector’ scheme. The select committee has also sent the Justice Department all of Meadows’ text messages and related evidence. In addition, the House panel shared transcripts of interviews with several witnesses related to the ‘fake elector’ scheme and the efforts by Trump and his allies to pressure states to overturn their election results, specifically in Georgia.
This wasn’t considered the least bit controversial. Congressional and federal investigators were examining many of the same questions, interviewing similar witnesses and reviewing related evidence. As the bipartisan committee wrapped up its work in late 2022, it stood to reason that prosecutors would want to examine the panel’s findings, just as it stood to reason that the committee would be willing to share its work-product with the Justice Department.
This was hardly “breaking news” three years ago. To characterize it as “breaking news” now is kind of silly, even by Republican standards.
Nevertheless, after a conservative media outlet highlighted the House Judiciary Committee’s latest claims, Donald Trump interrupted his trip to Asia to declare by way of his social media platform, “Deranged Jack Smith is a criminal!!!”
To date, the former special counsel’s critics have not presented a shred of evidence that points to Smith having done anything wrong. Lest we forget, the incumbent president is himself a convicted felon.