Jack Goldsmith: “Jack Smith Owes Us an Explanation”
Co-chair Jack Goldsmith authored a guest essay in The New York Times, “Jack Smith Owes Us an Explanation.” He writes:
The special counsel Jack Smith’s two prosecutions against Mr. Trump — for election resistance and for misappropriating and mishandling classified documents — are the first against a former president. They are also the first by an executive branch whose top officials — once Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris — have been running for president against the target of the administration’s prosecution. It is much more vital in this context than ever before for the executive branch to take scrupulous care to assure the public that the prosecutions are conducted in compliance with pertinent rules.
On this score, Mr. Smith has failed. The brief he recently filed sought to show that the election prosecution can continue despite the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. It laid out the government’s case against Mr. Trump with what many media reports described as bombshell new details about his wrongdoing. The filing is in clear tension with the Justice Department’s 60-day rule, which the department inspector general has described as a “longstanding department practice of delaying overt investigative steps or disclosures that could impact an election” within 60 days of it. However, the rule is unwritten and, as the inspector general made clear, has an uncertain scope.