JMA-PSOS ([personal profile] ionelv) wrote2025-01-15 02:07 pm

Special Counsel Jack Smith's report on Trump

For a sneak alpha preview of the next four years (and a recount of the last two months of his previous term), please read Jack Smith's report (especially pages 1-32). There are a few things that confuse me a great deal about the special counsel and Jan 6:
1. Why was Smith not appointed to investigate Trump's Jan 2021 riot until Nov 2022, a full 22 months after the crime?
2. Smith mentions in his letter preceding the report that "the Constitution forbids the federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President", but Trump is not the sitting president yet, and more importantly the Constitution does not forbid such thing, nor has SCOTUS concluded such thing ever (although this forbiddance is DOJ dogma as it is serving under POTUS).
3. Why did the original August 2023 indictments against him take almost a full year for SCOTUS to squash only in part (Trump v United States on July 1st 2024), and why did Jack Smith file late August 2024 superseding indictments (when the original ones were just fine even if not perfect) only to drop them after the election?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_immunity_in_the_United_States
https://www.justice.gov/storage/Report-of-Special-Counsel-Smith-Volume-1-January-2025.pdf
https://www.law.virginia.edu/news/202301/can-presidents-be-prosecuted-or-sued-professor-explains-differing-visions-immunity