It has long been a political truism that the only people allowed to act as special prosecutors are Republicans. I think Archibald Cox was the last one who identified as a Democrat. All the rest from Leon Jaworski, Lawrence Walsh to Ken Starr, Robert Ray, Patrick Fitzgerald and Robert Mueller were all known as conservatives. As it happens some of those conservatives were straight arrow types who took the job seriously. Some (*cough* Ken Starr*cough*) did not. But in no case was it even conceivable that one could appoint someone who is known as a liberal. Ever.
And the reason is ostensibly because if they did the right would smear them to “destroy their credibility.” Nowadays, it doesn’t matter. They get smeared anyway.
Here’s the first salvo against the new Special Counsel Jack Smith:
Former President Donald Trump raged online after finding out that the wife of the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland is a Democratic donor who was involved in a documentary about former first lady Michelle Obama.
Justice Department career prosecutor Jack Smith was appointed by Garland to oversee investigations into Trump with the apparent goal of shielding the department from accusations of partiality.
Katy Chevigny, Smith’s wife, was listed as a producer on “Becoming,” the former first lady’s 2020 documentary. She also donated $2,000 to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, according to FEC records.
Trump took to Truth Social to rant about Chevigny and Smith, attaching screenshots of her Tweets supporting the Democratic Party and accusing the Department of Justice of being biased in their investigation
“This is just a small amount of information from the wife of the hard-line Radical Left Special Counsel (prosecutor), an acolyte of Eric Holder and Barack Hussein Obama,” he wrote on Tuesday night.
Eric Trump joined his father on the conservative social media website, attaching a screenshot of Chevigny’s producer credit on the Wikipedia page for “Becoming” as proof of a supposed vendetta against the former president.
“The wife of the Special Counsel Biden chose to investigate @realDonaldTrump (his likely opponent in 2024) reportedly produced the Michelle Obama documentary,” he wrote. “Yes America, you are reading this correctly.”
Former Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich added on Twitter: “No wonder Jack Smith accepted this special assignment…The swamp is hard at work!”
“You would think that if the stated purpose to avoid any type of concern about bias were sincere, then they would at least check to see whether or not when you shake the family tree of the special counsel, any virulent Trump haters, Never Trumpers, Biden supporters fall out,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said in an interview with Steve Bannon on Tuesday,
Notably, many conservatives did not express the same indignation when Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote to Wisconsin and Arizona lawmakers to overturn the results of the 2020 elections and begged Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in text messages to not concede.
The former president is currently in the middle of two separate investigations by the Justice Department: one regarding his involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and another into his keeping classified records from the White House in his Mar-a-Lago home after leaving office.
They would find something no matter who they chose because the smear is designed to make the prosecutor go easy on Trump so as to prove he isn’t biased (or henpecked by this Hollywood wife.) And in any case they would do everything in their power to delegitimize the investigation, which they have already done. There is no point in even attempting to avoid it.
If this case every goes to trial you can bet that unless they appoint a jury who all shows up wearing MAGA hats, they’ll delegitimize that too. And even then, if the MAGA hat wearing jurors found him guilty they’d say they were Antifa in disguise. They cannot be appeased.