The Insane Jack Smith Thing Everyone Missed

The federal special counsel subtly signaled a massive threat

Oct. 3: Trump said he’d declare victory no matter what … Trump staffer: “Make them riot” … North Carolina GOP paved the way for flooding … Economists call out more Vance BS again …

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Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith during a June 6, 2023, announcement about former Pres. Donald Trump and just some of his crimes. (Screengrab / DOJ video.)

Judge Tanya Chutkan yesterday released the special counsel’s filing in the case of Donald J. Trump v. Democracy, and it had more smoking guns than an NRA convention…would have if the NRA allowed guns in there.

There are many important takeaways here. I’ll get to the big one no one else has mentioned, but almost as important is the understanding that the attempted theft of the election didn’t happen on January 6. It was an ongoing scheme with multiple attempts beginning well before a single vote was cast and with a willingness to use violence immediately after Election Day to stop the vote count.

Trump yesterday immediately complained that people were learning too much truth about his attempted 2020 election theft too soon, about a month before his attempted 2024 election theft. The reason special counsel Jack Smith’s filing came so late, of course, is that Trump has delayed the case by months.

And Trump’s own appointees on the Supreme Court required the new filing by ruling that some of the charges Smith originally wanted to bring were off the table because they occurred in the course of Trump performing his official duties as president. So, Smith had to take another shot at it, and convince Chutkan with this filing that these charges and this evidence are allowed under the Supreme Court ruling.

Understandably, much of the media focus yesterday was on the specifics revealed by Smith. Unless Smith has his facts wrong — and neither the witnesses or even the Trump campaign are disputing anything (specifically, anyway) — Smith’s got Trump dead to rights, specifically the rights of Americans to vote.

The closest thing Trump had to a defense until now was the possibility that he didn’t actually believe he lost. Which, to be fair, is plausible given a lifetime of stupidity that was nurtured and fed by his wealth.

If Trump didn’t believe he lost, then he could argue he was legitimately searching for real votes. Knowing he lost and trying to win anyway is the difference between a guy breaking into a home he thought was his and breaking in because it’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and he wants to live there.

But what no one picked up on yesterday was that Smith’s filing was a massive Amicus Fuckyou brief to the Supreme Court. But first, the smoking guns.

So Many Smoking Guns

Smith’s filing makes clear that Trump’s claims of voter fraud — months before the voting — were not only baseless because nothing had happened yet, but they were an important part of the scheme, establishing a predicate for Trump’s allies to intervene and steal the election, by force if necessary.

And now we know that Trump was willing to lie because he said he was.

Trump’s people told him before Election Day that it would be close and that it would likely look promising for him in the early counting but that votes counted later, including more mail-in ballots, would tilt toward Biden. Trump knew all of that.

But here’s Smith’s filing:

“Privately, the defendant told advisors…that in such a scenario, he would simply declare victory before [italics added for crime emphasis] all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.* 

That’s malice aforethought, as much as Trump has ever aforethought anything.

And putting January 6 in obscene context, we also now have campaign official Mike Roman explicitly conspiring to incite violence to rob Michigan voters of their right to participatory democracy. Told on November 4th that a new Detroit vote count for Joe Biden was accurate, Roman responded, “find a reason it isn’t.” And, Roman said, “give me options to file litigation,” adding, “even if itbis [sic]” accurate.

Roman was then warned that the vote-counting facility could see a repeat of the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot, when supporters of George W. Bush used violence in Florida to try to stop the vote count there — because Trump didn’t invent one single thing about the Republican Party of 2024. So, 20 years later, how did Roman respond to the prospect of mob violence stopping the vote count?

“Make them riot,” Roman wrote. “Do it!!!” with three exclamation points, one for each time Trump lost the popular vote.

Roman then went on Twitter to facilitate said rioting. “TRUMP Challengers being ejected from ballot canvassing in Detroit! The Steal is on!!” Remember, Roman had just admitted privately that he knew he lacked any basis for these claims, because he had told the other staffer to find one.

Goading mob violence publicly to make good on private strategy wasn’t just a tactic of Trump workers. The big man did it, too.

As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow astutely pointed out, which is typically how she points out, Smith’s filing stitches together a lot of free-floating dots, both previously unknown and known. For one, we knew that then-Vice President Mike Pence said Trump had told him hundreds of thousands of people “are gonna hate your guts” if Pence continued refusing to certify Trump. But what Smith highlights is that it was immediately after this threat that Trump Tweeted out his call for people to show up at the January 6th rally, in other words, Trump was trying to get those hundreds of thousands of people to the crime scene to do the crime he had just threatened Pence with.

The reason to mount doomed court challenges was that winning them wasn’t the point. The legal battle itself was just a tool the Trump campaign needed to give their allies an excuse to steal the election. Y’know, to clear up the confusion the Trump campaign had manufactured.

That’s why it’s so important, in Smith’s filing, that when Trump is told by a White House staffer that Rudy Giulinai wouldn’t be able to prove shit in court, Trump responded, “The details don’t matter.”

Y’know who thinks details matter? People who believe in their case and want to win!

And Trump’s explicit indifference to the facts of the case — because, again, the point wasn’t to win the battle but to cloud the battlefield — came up more than once. After the election, after the counting, Trump told unnamed family members, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

Before yesterday, we had tons of examples of people, including Trump’s own lawyers, telling Trump he lost, that the legal cases were made up. It was good evidence, but it didn’t prove that Trump knew he was lying, which is what turns those vote challenges from a good-faith part of the process into bad-faith means of giving his allies cause to steal the Electoral College votes.

So, how’s this all a fuck-you to the Supreme Court?

As lots of folks have pointed out, Smith went out of his way in yesterday’s filing to distinguish between Trump’s official acts — which are immune from prosecution — and his private acts, like campaign shenanigans — which the Supreme Court says can still be prosecuted. Maybe.

The court’s ruling was, on its face, crazy. Every legal precept we have establishes higher standards, not lower, for those entrusted with public office. Using your presidential office to crime should be a worse offense than using your Trump Organization office to crime. This is obvious to anyone old enough to comprehend Schoolhouse Rock.

Even the concept that the duties of the presidency might involve some official, approved crimes is absurdly incoherent. Not to mention an obscene loogy in the face of George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other freedom-loving slave-owners.

And Smith is subtly trolling this Supreme absurdity in his filing. He notes, appropriately, the ruling’s constraints on him, but he chooses to juxtapose them directly with the specific result: That Trump’s attempt to corrupt the Justice Department is now off limits:

“...the Supreme Court held that presidents are immune from prosecution for certain official conduct—including the defendant’s use of the Justice Department in furtherance of his scheme…”

Using the Justice Department in furtherance of a criminal scheme should absolutely not shield criminal schemes from prosecution!

And the Republican Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t just say it’s okay to corrupt the Justice Department. It doesn’t even merely allow Trump to get away with corrupting the DOJ.

No, what Smith is really trying to flag here (I think but can’t prove), is that the Supreme Court has now incentivized all future presidents to go out of their way to use the agencies and powers of the executive branch to advance their own personal interests.

If a president wants to commit a crime, the best way to do it now is to force government officials to do it for you.

And the presumable reason Smith wanted this out now is because there was a very real chance that no one would ever know just how much Trump actually did if Trump wins the presidency next month, and gets access to a federal government he’s now got every reason in the world to use in his criminal endeavors. 

BAD TIMING FOR LOTS OF PEOPLE The filing’s release wasn’t just a basket of inconveniently timed truths for Trump. It came just one day after Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) gave us the closest thing to a viral moment in his debate.

After smacking Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) around politely but with lies for an hour and a half, Vance got pinned by Walz on the last question, refusing to say whether Trump lost in 2020. It would have been one thing to say Trump won — then you still have the defense of being a total idiot. But refusing to say means you know the truth and don’t want people to know that. And that’s the difference between being a total idiot and being a total idiot with a total lack of character.

And it wasn’t just bad timing for Vance. Former Mesa County, Colorado, Clerk Tina Peters is being sentenced today for her election crimes. Peters was convicted of breaching the voting systems she was sworn to protect. (h/t)

How so? After the election, she gave access to the county’s voting machines to a guy who had no legal business accessing them, a guy working not for the campaigns or the people but for a pillow salesman. Yes, Newsfucker, the guy was working for the Mad Pillow Salesman of MAGA Land, Mike Lindell. And if you haven’t yet, you should really read my reporting on how it took the National Prayer Breakfast just two years to seize the lumpy Lindell and fluff him up into a Jesus-worshiping Trump worshiper.

Peters, the clerk, is unremorseful, of course. But she’s facing a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. So let’s hope they have nice pillows.

Helene Had Political Accomplices in North Carolina Killing Spree

Journalistically speaking, it’s a good idea to assume that before any catastrophe, someone deregulated something — in the name of money or progress or money or efficiency or money — and ended up making things worse.

Which brings us to North Carolina and Hurricane Helene and new reporting from the New York Times which reminds us all that, yes, we should all unsubscribe and become paid subscribers of The Fucking News — but it’s also a good thing that rich Wordle players will continue subsidizing the Times’s good journalism.

The Times’s Christopher Flavelle runs down just how much worsified North Carolina state legislators made things in the years before Helene, especially after Republicans got control of the legislature. Here’s the top-line summary of the damage they did in just the past 15 years:

• Refused to limit building construction on steep slopes.

• Refused to require homes be built above the height of floods they knew were coming.

• Weakened wetland protections, meaning there’d be less wetlands to soak up floodwaters.

• Delayed building-code updates, cutting the state off from federal grants for climate resilience.

• Banned local planning officials from planning on rising sea levels.

Why did legislators do all this, despite the obvious threat it posted? Because North Carolina’s home builders wanted to build on steep slopes and wetlands and didn’t want the added cost of elevating homes above the inevitable water lines. And home construction companies don’t just donate to state lawmakers, some of them are state lawmakers.

Republican state legislator Mark Brody defended the rejection of state standards, telling the Times, “There are places that are designated floodplains that never flood … and the locals would know this better than having a blanket state rule.”

The locals would also be more likely to be corrupt, as anyone who’s ever watched a single movie about a small-town sheriff would know. That’s the dirty secret every time a politician argues to let locals decide.

It’s been true of Jim Crow and voting rights. It’s what Trump’s arguing right now about letting states decide on abortion. And it’s definitely true of environmental standards. The smaller you make the jurisdiction, the less likely the victims will have the numbers to stand up against the local mayor who’s also a real-estate developer and/or owns auto dealerships.

As with any flooding, the consequences always flow downhill. And if democracy dies in darkness, check out these pictures of the eastern U.S. at night before and after Helene:

Laws of Supply and Demand Dramatically Lower the Price of Vance’s Lies

The massive surplus of lies by Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) is dramatically lowering the price, new reports suggest. There are so many Vance lies out there, that they’ve lost pretty much all news value, and Vance no longer seems to be paying any price for them.

Which means now we’re giving them away! Here’s today’s freebie.

Remember how Vance said during the debate that immigrants are driving up the cost of housing? Well, first of all, most politicians in memory have said it’s a good thing when home values go up. But never mind the inherent economic tradeoffs in a system of haves and have-lesses.

Point is that Vance was full of shit. And the Washington Post reports that economists say he’s full of shit. (It’s worth noting that, historically, economists have been full of shit, but not this time, apparently.)

There’s some truth to poor immigrants giving landlords the option to jack up rents thanks to the competition. But the housing shortage is much broader than just poor renters, and it’s not Haitian factory workers driving up the costs of mid-range homes.

Plus, ironically, Vance and Trump’s threatened mass deportations could make housing costs skyrocket. Why? Because who’s gonna build homes when the immigrants are gone?

But there’s other points to make here, especially about Springfield, OH, birthplace of Vance’s housing bullshit. As readers of the Jonathan Larsen Substack learned weeks ago, it’s rich people causing the housing problems.

That’s true nationally — as Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) knocked the commodification of residential housing during the debate — but especially in Springfield. For several reasons.

One, as Springfield itself is now investigating, local businesses worked to bring Haitian immigrants there to fill empty factory jobs — without giving the city a heads-up so the city could pursue the resources to house and serve these new residents.

Two, as Springfield officials themselves have said, predatory landlords are part of the problem. That includes predatory LLCs (limited liability companies) from out of town buying up residential properties and then evicting longtime tenants to pack in an illegal number of Haitians for higher rents.

The town’s looking into that, too. And remember, LLCs don’t have to exist. They used to be illegal. But then someone deregulated them in the name of money and the consequences flowed downhill.

Three Quickies

• Hey there, ladies, which of you fine creatures would love to live in a world where dudes can get Smart Glasses capable of instantly scanning your face, finding your identity, and looking up your address and phone number? Well, TFN’s got good news for you! The same institution that gave us Facebook is on the case! That’s right, Harvard students have force-married Smart Glass with face-scanning software and given birth to a bouncing baby doxxing and stalking machine. The future is here and it’s time to demand more Big Tech regulation.

• “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress Cheryl Hines reportedly is considering divorcing husband Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Not for his decades of deadly anti-vaccine crusading. Not for his alleged sexting with writer Olivia Nuzzi. Not even for the newest report of Kennedy’s affairs with one two three separate women. According to the New York Post, one potentially non-fictional source allegedly said, “The guy is a serial philanderer and she knew that coming in.” So, that’s not the problem. No, the problem is Kennedy’s unsavory relationship with a man: Donald J. Trump. As one alleged source allegedly said, “[S]he never signed up to be a member of Trump World!” We know how you feel.

• As if Trump’s threat to veto an abortion ban weren’t enough of a fork in the eye of his Christian conservative base, now his wife is twisting said fork in her new, uh, “memoir” that she totally wrote with her Englishes. The Guardian newspaper obtained a copy of the first-time, uh, author’s upcoming book. And according to The Guardian, Melania Trump, uh, writes “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.” It is, of course, the least surprising thing in the world that someone married to Donald Trump is a huge fan of abortion.

TCB

You can find my original reporting at Jonathan Larsen’s Substack, and you can support TFN’s original snarking with a donation or a paid subscription.

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Go get ‘em, kids!