by Julie Kelly at Declassified with Julie Kelly
Jack Smith lurched into a Washington courtroom in September, fully aware all eyes had turned to him.
Surrounded by a team of federal prosecutors and guarded by a government-paid security detail, Smith, a lanky man with a scruffy beard and ill-fitting suit, stood behind the government’s table with arms folded. He slowly turned around with a partial scowl to appraise the audience—mostly reporters and D.C. residents eager to watch the restart of his January 6-related case against Donald Trump—to make sure he was noticed. He did not speak during the proceedings.
That appearance, perhaps unbeknownst to him at the time, looks like Smith’s last time in a federal courtroom as the special counsel prosecuting Trump. Citing Department of Justice rules that prohibit the prosecution of a sitting president, Smith reportedly is working with his bosses at the DOJ to figure out how to drop both the D.C. case and the classified documents in case in Florida; Smith has appealed Judge Aileen Cannon’s order dismissing the indictment based on the special counsel’s unconstitutional appointment.
The move represents another political fatality tied to Trump’s resounding victory on Tuesday. It also represents another humiliating defeat for the man the media portrayed as a steely war-crimes prosecutor plucked off a high profile international trial at the Hague by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to finally realize a longtime DOJ dream: put Donald Trump behind bars.