We have all watched the showdown between President Donald Trump and his latest attacker, Jack Smith. Appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland as the Department of Justice's special counsel, Smith has been the “top dog” overseeing the investigations into Donald Trump and the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
The Special Counsel’s team urged the Supreme Court to dismiss Trump's immunity claim, arguing, "federal criminal law applies to the president.” What Smith doesn’t say is that he is attempting to circumvent the legal process to push through a rushed verdict before November.
Supporters of President Trump across the nation, including myself, are raising their eyebrows, questioning Smith’s motives and rationale. This is a classic example of government overreach. The constitutional right to a speedy trial is a defendant’s right, not the government’s. Yet, Smith is arguing for a speedy trial in a direct abuse of this basic tenet of law.
Already, Smith has noted that he will go past federal Judge Aileen Cannon and appeal to a higher court in the alleged confidential documents case if he doesn’t get what he wants. Ignoring his own abuse of the federal courts by having an anti-Trump District of Columbia grand jury investigate the allegations that the former president broke confidential records laws, rather than a grand jury in Florida, which has jurisdiction over the case. Smith’s actions have Americans rightfully outraged.
But this isn’t the only way Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is overstepping the bounds of the law. It is eerily similar to how the DOJ and its sister federal agency, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), are pushing an antitrust agenda by circumventing legal precedent in pursuit of their preferred outcomes. Like Special Counsel Jack Smith, FTC Chair Lina Khan and DOJ Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter are severely tampering with the law. With these people in power, our economy is in serious trouble.
While Americans for Limited Government did support the Department of Justice under President Trump for opposing the ATT, TimeWarner merger as a dangerous consolidation of multiple powerful platforms in a world where communications giants were actively censoring speech, I cannot help but wonder why some Republicans are applauding the very aggressive anti-trust agenda pursued by the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division.
Rather than giving these extreme antitrust enthusiasts the same treatment as Smith for his expansive view of the law, some of my “peers” who purport to support President Trump are blindly following the actions of the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and other members of the antitrust army.
The goal of antitrust regulation is to ensure the playing field is level and that companies have the opportunity to compete, regardless of size. The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have been attempting to slash private sector mergers left and right with no evidence to back their cases. Thankfully, judges have agreed, considering in her first couple of years, Khan and the Federal Trade Commission lost every merger challenge it brought through litigation across both federal and administrative courts.
Supporters of President Trump should also realize that the Biden administration’s broad attacks on mergers and acquisitions ceded America’s competitive economic advantage to our foreign rivals. How can anyone claim they are maintaining competitive markets by preventing competition from happening in the first place? Competition is an essential pillar that keeps the economy from sinking.
Just as Jack Smith is targeting President Trump to take political decisions out of the hands of voters, the DOJ’s and FTC’s attacks on successful American companies remove the consumers’ right to choose in the marketplace. Why should a company be penalized because they are doing better than their competitors? Why should consumers be limited to the products, services, and prices they really want?
Consumers should have full autonomy over their purchasing decisions. Not the so-called “experts” in the Biden administration who think they know better than the average American.
Khan, Kanter, and Smith are all peas in the same pod. Their overreach is weakening the foundation of our nation and blindly disregarding precedent in the pursuit of their own goals – and supporters of President Trump should not become sheep of the Biden administration’s FTC and DOJ.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government (ALG).