Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
House GOP Releases Jack Smith Transcript
The Republican Party is stuck in the pre-internet era. Jack Smith, who had two felony cases against thecurrent president, testified before a House committee in December, and when it did not produce the propaganda jolt the Republicans wanted, they released the transcript and video on New Year's Eve. In the old days, that would have been a good way to bury the story. Sadly for them, the internet has made this kind of release far less effective. The record shows that Jack Smtih not only did things on the up and up, he had the goods on Donald Trump.
The 255-page transcript makes for interesting reading:
Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” (p. 17)
The idea that the investigations were political is nonsense. "[O]ne of the strengths of our case and why we felt we had such strong proof is all witnesses were not going to be political enemies of the President. They were going to be political allies. We had numerous witnesses who would say, "I voted for President Trump. I campaigned for President Trump. I wanted him to win.' The Speaker of the House in Arizona. The Speaker of the House in Michigan. We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former Congressman who was going to be an elector for President Trump who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal. Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party." (p. 28)
As part of his investigation, Mr. Smith examined phone records of some members of Congress. This has made many members of the GOP upset. How dare he, etc.? In fact, it was entirely legitimate. "President Trump and his associates tried to call members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election. I did not choose those members, President Trump did," Mr. Smith testified.
Perhaps the most important paragraph in the whole transcript reads, "There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowing -- knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history."
The American system failed miserably in the cases Mr. Smith investigated. Donald J. Trump does have 34 fraud convictions (each a felony), and he should be in jail in New York for that. But the damage the insurrection and documents cases have done to the American image and power both internally and externally will linger for years, decades even, because of this failure.
Jack Smith is the kind of lawyer the world needs in vast quantities. He follows the law and the facts,and let justice be done though the heavens may fall. Justice has not been done in either of these cases, and it probably never will be.
The decline under the Trump administration continues to accelerate.
© Copyright 2026 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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