In a closing argument he by no means received to make to a jury, Jack Smith, the previous particular counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump, insisted that his thwarted prosecution was righteous and that his investigators set an instance “for others to fight for justice.”
“While we were not able to bring the cases we charged to trial, I believe the fact that our team stood up for the rule of law matters,” Mr. Smith wrote in a last report issued in the course of the night time, whereas a lot of the nation was asleep.
However the end result of his work could have in truth had the alternative impact. Given the rulings that went towards him by courts that Mr. Trump helped form, Mr. Smith departs an important prosecutorial job within the nation over the previous two years with the unintended consequence of giving Mr. Trump and each future president extra, not much less, freedom from authorized constraints.
And the Justice Division, whose ideas Mr. Smith fiercely defended in his final hours as particular counsel, now enters a second Trump administration with much less authority to pursue a president than it has had in half a century, after a sweeping Supreme Court docket resolution that granted presidents broad immunity.
“I have a lot of respect and sympathy for Jack Smith,” stated Peter Zeidenberg, a lawyer who served in a President George W. Bush-era particular counsel investigation. “His efforts were unsuccessful, but not through any fault of his own. The roadblocks he faced were insurmountable.”
Crucial rulings, from the Supreme Court docket and from Choose Aileen M. Cannon of Federal District Court docket in Southern Florida, tied Mr. Smith’s arms, Mr. Zeidenberg stated: “Sadly, the courts and the Justice Department proved themselves to be not up to the task of finding justice when the defendant is this particular former president.”
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