Rebecca will have more on this later today, but the circus behind the Trump indictments could be starting to unravel. CBS News’ Catherine Herridge reported that Special Counsel Jack Smith might not have even reviewed the supposed incriminating documents before indicting Donald Trump over the January 6 riot. That’s blatant prosecutorial misconduct—negligence, too. But this isn’t the first allegation of this sort amid the ongoing strategy from the Left of killing Trump via death by a thousand legal cuts.
NEW: Lawyer for ex-NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik says special counsel may not have reviewed records before indicting Trump via @CBSNews https://t.co/jmUVN8mfKM
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) August 3, 2023
Let’s go back to June. The lawyer for Walt Nauta, a Trump aide who was also indicted over the classified document controversy, alleged that one of the key prosecutors tried pressuring him into convincing his client to cooperate in their investigation by bringing up his judgeship application. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump of mishandling classified materials the day this story was published, June 8 (via The Guardian):
The lawyer for Donald Trump’s valet, under scrutiny in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation, has submitted court papers describing a meeting at which a top federal prosecutor brought up his application to be a judge when they tried to gain the valet’s cooperation last year, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The allegation, described in a letter filed under seal with the chief US judge in Washington, James Boasberg, could affect the investigation just as prosecutors are considering whether to bring charges.
Even though prosecutors have no control over the success of judicial applications, the fact that it was raised in the context of trying to persuade a lawyer for a witness to recommend cooperating could give the appearance of coercion in one of the justice department’s most high-profile cases.
[…]
Nauta had already spoken to prosecutors in the investigation when they called his lawyer Stanley Woodward and summoned him to a meeting at justice department headquarters for an urgent matter that they were reluctant to discuss over the phone, the letter said.
When Woodward arrived at the conference room, he was seated across from several prosecutors working on the investigation, including the chief of the counterintelligence section, Jay Bratt, who explained that they wanted Nauta to cooperate with the government against Trump, the letter said.
Nauta should cooperate with the government because he had given potentially conflicting testimony that could result in a false statements charge, the prosecutors said according to the letter. Woodward is said to have demurred, disputing that Nauta had made false statements.
Bratt then turned to Woodward and remarked that he did not think that Woodward was a “Trump guy” and that “he would do the right thing”, before noting that he knew Woodward had submitted an application to be a judge at the superior court in Washington DC that was currently pending, the letter said.
The allegation, in essence, is that Bratt suggested Woodward’s judicial application might be considered more favorably if he and his client cooperated against Trump.
The Department of Justice bursts at the seams with snakes. They interfered in multiple investigations involving Hunter Biden, even blocking US Attorney David Weiss from filing charges against the president’s son multiple times. The corruption reached the attorney general’s office, which appears to have lied to Congress about this subject. Merrick Garland claimed the Hunter Biden investigations had total independence. That was a lie. So, are we shocked a key prosecutor in these efforts to ensnare Trump would do this, bring up an attorney’s judgeship, and essentially threaten to derail it if he didn’t tell Mr. Nauta to cooperate?
Not at all.