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Closing the tabs …

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Ed: “Dying with a whimper,” indeed. And a well-deserved death it was, too. Perhaps some may rethink the lawfare strategy of electoral politics in the future. 

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“These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

“It was a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump added.

Ed: I note with some amusement that ABC News didn’t bother to link to Trump’s TruthSocial post or JD Vance’s tweet on the dismissal. 

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Trump ran for president with the national electorate well aware that he was under federal charges and had been found guilty in Bragg’s case. He won decisively (even if “landslide” descriptions are an exaggeration), beating his Democratic rival in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. If there is an enduring stigma that will affect Trump’s performance, I don’t detect it.

Of course, the Justice Department has to apply a standard for all future cases, not just the strange cases brought against Trump. It is not difficult to imagine situations where there would, indeed, be great opprobrium and anxiety were a sitting president confronting criminal prosecution upon leaving office.

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Anti-Trump lawfare has collapsed.

Ed: Let’s hope that lawfare has collapsed in general. This isn’t the first time Democrats have used it. Travis County prosecutors in Austin, TX used lawfare against Tom DeLay and Rick Perry, too, for their own political purposes. That hasn’t made them any more popular in the Lone Star State, I can assure you. 

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“Smith had sort of a gratuitous end to his term. You know, he pushed not only for a trial before the election, and he pushed for months for that, but he also released damaging information before the election something that many people saw as an effort to influence the election,” [Jonathan] Turley said. “Smith knew that if Trump won, he was out of a job and this release of the information was entirely unnecessary, [Judge Tanya Chutkan] admitted that it was procedurally irregular, but she went along with it and I think that that did tarnish his position and certainly in history because he didn’t have to do that. He had become so absolutely fixated on trying Trump before the election, that he lost credibility I think with the courts.”

Turley referred to Smith’s 165-page un-redacted brief released Oct. 2 detailing how Trump allegedly attempted to overturn the 2020 election, which had been released in an attempt to prove that the now-president-elect’s actions on Jan.6, 2021 were not official presidential acts.

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Ed: Smith’s report may or may not get to Merrick Garland in time for release before Pam Bondi takes over as AG. In a sense, though, it will be an anti-climax, because that unredacted brief is pretty much Smith’s whole argument in the January 6 case. And even though Trump and his supporters rightly criticized that highly irregular release — which among other things could have tainted the jury pool — it also removed the argument that the trial would have somehow “educated” voters to reject Trump. Of course, that brings us to Rep. Dan Goldman’s meltdown … 

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Ed: The Department of Justice is not an “independent” agency. It exists under the purview of the president as part of the executive branch. Goldman’s entire argument is a mixture of denial and projection, especially in his claim that Trump will politicize agencies that have already become wildly politicized. As far as the claim that voters didn’t have the evidence presented to them, Smith published it a few weeks ago in his October 2 court filing, as noted above.  

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Ed: No, they can’t be revived. By dismissing the case with or without prejudice, the statute of limitations applies, and that’s only five years. The alleged crimes took place four years ago. Time didn’t run out on prosecution because the election came up; the DoJ only took up these cases when it became clear that Trump wanted to run again. Any judge that waives the statute of limitations under those circumstances should get impeached and removed. 

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