Let's talk about Trump failing to bury the Jack Smith deposition release.... - Belle of the Ranch

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about Trump failing to bury the Jack Smith deposition release.

You know what you do with a document when you want to make sure the public doesn't see it? You release it on New Year's Eve knowing it'll be buried because something else will knock it out of the 24-hour news cycle. That's exactly what Republicans did with the transcript to Jack Smith's closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee, which happened back on December 17th.

The whole idea behind Republicans looking into Smith was the hope of showing that there was some kind of political motivation behind the investigations into Trump's alleged election interference and his alleged willful retention of national defense information. Given the fact that Republicans are attempting to bury the release of the transcript of the lengthy grilling they gave Smith, you can guess how it went.

As a sample. Smith said, "The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for nine of those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the 10 indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts.”

There's going to be a whole bunch of articles and lists going over the 255 page document, but we'll do a little summary now. What's in the transcript? The biggest piece of news was probably that Smith hadn't finished making all of his charging decisions and that there were other people he was considering charging. "I had not made final determinations about that at the time that President Trump won reelection.”

Once Trump won, his office was certain to be shut down. One of the big questions that has been the subject of speculation since the investigation was why Smith didn't pursue conversations with people like Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, and Roger Stone. He said they were uncooperative with other investigators and that “and the sort of information that they could provide us in my view wasn't worth immunizing them for their possible conduct.”

Having Smith suggest they might have been engaged in chargeable conduct probably wasn't how they saw that going. The GOP push to blame Smith for their phone records being requested fell apart pretty quickly. Smith didn't request the record and most importantly, he was not Special Counsel when the DOJ investigators pulled a 2-year batch of House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan's phone records.

Anytime anybody tried to suggest or get Smith to inadvertently imply any decision was politically motivated, it fell apart pretty quickly. At one point, Smith disclosed that they were so careful about making sure they didn't influence the election they actually met with the public integrity division of DOJ.

But I'd imagine the most quoted bit of the Smith transcript will be, "the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”

I think most people watching this channel already had that feeling, but now you have it straight from Smith.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.