Rats Flee Sinking DOJ Ship The scales of justice have a chance to recalibrate following Donald Trump’s resounding victory and the departure of key figures at the Biden/Harris Department of Justice. Julie Kelly
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The New York Times today confirmed Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors plan to resign before Donald Trump takes office in January. In what must have been a painful article to write, Devlin Barrett and Glenn Thrush, two reliable mouthpieces for the Department of Justice, said Smith’s office is “drawing up its plan for how to end the cases” against the incoming president. It is also unclear whether Smith will file a confidential report summarizing the special counsels’ work, a requirement under the DOJ special counsel rules.
Smith further “finds himself on the defensive,” according to the Times, as House Republicans prepare to investigate the investigators. “Republican lawmakers told Justice Department officials who had worked on the Trump cases to preserve all of their communications for investigators,” Barrett and Thrush wrote. “That is a sure sign that a new balance of power in Washington will make Mr. Smith among those being hunted by congressional investigators and others.”
Smith’s double-barreled pursuit of Trump—he filed unprecedented federal indictments against the incoming president in Washington for the events of January 6 and in southern Florida related to Trump’s alleged hoarding of national defense secrets—ends with a whisper not a bang, a result the regime media and Democrats in Washington never envisioned. For two years, cable news hosts and self-described “legal experts” hung on Smith’s every move in court, salivating over the vision of the war-crimes prosecutor hauling their longtime nemesis off to the gulag in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.
Not only did that scenario never come to fruition, Smith himself is now the target of a potential criminal investigation. Representatives James Jordan (R-Ohio) and Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) sent a letter to Smith last week demanding the preservation of all records; Jordan further indicated during a recent interview that as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he may ask Smith to publicly testify.
That, of course, is a no-brainer. The tight-lipped Smith—who insisted he would do all his talking through court documents, only speaking twice when announcing both indictments—must be forced to explain himself to the American people. It won’t be a pretty sight; in contrast to the confused almost sympathetic Congressional appearance by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2019, Smith instead will lay bare his sense of superiority and air of imperviousness for all the world to see.
All the Way Down the Line
Smith, however, should not testify alone. Jay Bratt, who has been accused of threatening a defense attorney in the classified documents case in an attempt to get his client to flip on Trump among other instances of misconduct, should explain his involvement in the matter from the beginning. Bratt’s tiny fingerprints are all over the bogus case dating back to 2021 when he visited the Biden White House at least twice. Bratt also joined three FBI agents during a voluntary search of Mar-a-Lago in June 2022 for government papers then fought “aggressively,” as one former FBI official described it, behind the scenes to pursue the armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.
Bratt, it appears, also plans a hasty exit from the DOJ, where he has served in top positions for decades.
But panic at the DOJ isn’t contained just to the special counsel’s office. Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports that DOJ employees are “terrified” over Trump’s return to the White House; one DOJ attorney told Gerstein the department’s prosecutors “are losing their minds.”
“The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out,” the unnamed attorney told Gerstein.
Savor that sweetness for just a moment.
Even rank-and-file prosecutors involved in high-profile January 6 cases appear distraught at the possibility they might be held accountable for their conduct.
“One Justice employee told CNN that people inside the department are ‘safety planning.’ Another told CNN that some are considering whether they should hire lawyers. A third official told CNN that there is a ‘general sense of depression’ among attorneys who worked on legal cases that some Republican lawmakers have spoken out against, saying those attorneys are concerned their years of work will be ‘flushed down the drain.’”
Their fear is justified. In case after case, defense attorneys determined prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence, required under the Brady rule, and violated due process rights of J6 defendants. Prosecutors also systematically misused a post-Enron document-shredding statute to turn otherwise nonviolent protesters into lifelong felons. In June, the Supreme Court concluded the DOJ unlawfully applied 18 USC 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding, in J6 cases but not before hundreds were charged and over 100 sent to prison.
In fact, the entire “Capitol Siege” investigation, as the DOJ calls it, represents an egregious example of selective prosecution since no other group of political protesters in U.S. history has been subjected to the type of federal charges levied against J6ers.
Barbarians at the Gaetz
One can only assume the exodus from the DOJ will accelerate after Trump announced he will nominate Florida Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general. The nomination appeared to shock even Trump insiders; Gaetz’s name never surfaced as a possible contender.
Gaetz is a Pitbull with a long record of confronting bad actors in the DOJ including FBI Director Christopher Wray. (He also reportedly will resign before he is fired on January 20.) He has been an outspoken defender of J6ers and likely will champion the cause to pardon them next year.
If anyone can chase more rats out of the DOJ, it is Gaetz.
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