Jack Smith's brief explains why this is not a normal election

By Legal Correspondent Saori Shiroseki with
Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

According to today's New York Times, the Presidential election is a thrilling down-to-the-wire horse race between Whirlaway and Man O' War:

 

According to Special Counsel Jack Smith's pre-trial brief filed in the District Court in Washington, it's something else.  It's a decision on whether to re-install a violent insurrectionist as President and allow him to complete his work of destroying constitutional democracy in the United States.

As Emily Litella would say, “Oh. That's different, then.”

To review the bidding, Smith filed his brief to explain to Judge Chutkan why, despite the best efforts of the bent Republican Supreme Court to exonerate the Tangerine-Faced Felon in the absence of a legal mandate to do so, the conduct charged in the indictment does not constitute immune official acts of a President, whatever that may mean.

Looks official to me: John Roberts '76

First Smith outlines the aspects of the Tangerine-Faced Felon's criminal conduct that cannot be considered to be the official acts of the President (We'll get to other aspects later).  After his frivolous lawsuits challenging election results in seven different states were all laughed out of court, Smith Br. at 14, the TFF and his co-conspirator mouthpieces, including the pathetic Rudy Giuliani and the laughable John Eastman, concocted two new schemes.

The first was to bully state officials into changing the results and not appointing electors who represented the victor (Joe Biden, in case you've forgotten).  Smith Br. at 16ff.  As part of this scheme lunatics like Sydney Powell repeatedly libeled voting machine companies by claiming their machines were defective or hacked.  These are the lies that eventually cost Rupert Murdoch $787 million.  

When that failed, the TFF crime gang tried to appoint fake electors in seven different states, send the resulting fake certifications to the Congress, Smith Br. at 49ff, where shameless integrity-free allies like the pride of Harvard Law School, Cancun Ted Cruz, would object to the certifications and claim falsely there was a controversy requiring further delay.

The crime depended on browbeating an apparently spineless Mike Pence into refusing to accept the state's electoral certifications, which was something he had no power to do.   The TFF must have been shocked when, after years of cringeworthy toadying to every corrupt evil scheme the TFF hatched, Pence said no.

In desperation, as outlined in Smith's filing, the TFF launched an attack on the Capitol to force Congress to abandon the election certification, Smith Br. at 74ff.  When the TFF was told that an armed mob had forced Pence and his Secret Service detail to retreat into a secure space and their lives were in danger, the TFF responded “So what?” Smith Br. at 142.

But even the 185 page account of the TFF's elected-related accounts had to leave out some of the worst of it.  For example, you won't find evidence that the TFF had attempted to corruptly influence the Justice Department to intervene to prevent counting and certification of the vote, by up to and including removing every senior Justice Department officer except the one co-conspirator ready to do his bidding.  Jan 6. Committee Report at 413.

Although this effort to pervert the course of justice was among the most serious criminal acts by the TFF, Smith could no longer pursue it, because according to the six bent Republican Supreme Court Justices (including three appointed by the very same TFF)  a President who obstructs justice by ordering federal law enforcement to intervene without legal warrant in an election has committed no crime.

Or, as Justice Sotomayor put it in dissent:

When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in ex- change for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

Which also explains why the efforts of the TFF and his corrupt enablers at the Defense Department is likewise missing.  Although this led to a remarkable order issue on January 4 preventing the deployment of the DC National Guard to protect the Congress, none of can be charged in an indictment because according to the bent Republican Justices, the President commits no crime when he orders the military to stage or support a coup. 

By the way, here's the infamous Defense Department memo.

 

So Jack Smith has heroically presented the criminal case against the TFF as best he could. Keep in mind however that even if Judge Chutkan finds that the conduct alleged is not in fact immune, her ruling will be reviewed by the Republican Party's judicial arm, the Supreme Court.  Since it is no longer possible to predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases based on their legal merits, what will happen is anyone's guess, or to be more precise, whatever Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow decide they want.

The point is that Jack Smith can't save us and can't save the Republic.  If the TFF wins the election, Smith is out, and possibly facing prosecution himself.  If the TFF loses, but Democrats fail to hold the Senate and take the House, the effective control over the nation will be exercised not by the duly elected political branches but by an unelected Republican oligarchy doing business as the Supreme Court.

It's just another reminder of the stakes we face in this election, or at least in the seven states that will decide it.

But of course to our media, it's just another exciting horse-race.  Better enjoy your mint julep while you can.