Politics - News Analysis

Trump Is Trying to Use His ‘Mueller Strategy’ with Jack Smith and He’s DOOMED to Fail

Trump finds himself once again facing a special prosecutor. The last time he heard that a special prosecutor would be investigated with special emphasis, Robert Mueller, Trump was heard to have said, “I’m fucked.” He may actually have had it wrong, then. Eventually, Bill Barr rode in to protect him. But it may be true now. Axios says that Trump is acting like its 2018 all over again, but as we enter the last month of 2022, this special counsel is entirely different. The old playbook won’t work. According to Axios:

Protection: Trump is no longer in office, meaning the Justice Department policy that barred Mueller from indicting a sitting president does not apply. The tools Trump wielded to discredit and jam up the investigation — threatening to fire DOJ officials, dangling pardons and using his bully pulpit — are no longer available to him. Nor is his loyalist Attorney General Bill Barr, who cushioned the blow of the final Mueller report by releasing a summary before making it public.

Mueller found ten instances of possible obstruction of justice. Trump would not and could not face any penalty for lying or obstructing the investigation until he was out of office, which he believed was six years away. Trump will not have all the protections afforded by the presidency. (Why Trump was never charged with obstruction of justice remains a mystery. ) He cannot lie his way through this if he chooses to talk, a safe presumption.

Timing: Both Garland and Smith have stressed that the appointment will not slow the pace of either investigation. Smith is inheriting teams of prosecutors and agents that have already made significant headway, unlike Mueller, who had to “fly and build the plane simultaneously,” as Weissman wrote in a recent N.Y. Times column.

This one is a little hard to believe. It would seem as though the investigators and prosecutors had made a decision to prosecute Trump (or why bring someone independent in?). Now someone has to review all that they have and make an independent judgment.

Scope: The sprawling Mueller probe involved both criminal and counterintelligence elements, with much of the key information buried in the bowels of a hostile foreign power. By comparison, the House Jan. 6 committee has already unearthed massive amounts of evidence expected to be referred to DOJ, while the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case is viewed by many legal experts as open-and-shut.

And that is the biggest difference other than not being president. No one was even sure what crimes might apply to the Mueller investigation, but as Axios says, the crimes Smith is pursuing happened practically in front of our eyes. There are three to four crimes at issue, and either the evidence is there to support charges, or they’re not.

 This isn’t 2017, and Trump’s tendency to sling mud at Smith and call him a Democrat who hates Trump will have no political or legal effect on the investigation. He can claim that he “won’t partake” in the investigation and it won’t impact anything. No one assumed that he would.

meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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