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On Monday afternoon, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s filing to drop the January 6 case against President-Elect Trump drew broadcast network special reports with ABC, CBS, and NBC breaking into regularly scheduled programming with sad, solemn tones about this beloved case “dying with a whimper” and what one correspondent deemed proof Americans think certain people can and should be above the law.

NBC’s personal BFF for the Deep State — aka Justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian — drew the short straw in having to put on a brave face about this “sparse but historic document” by Smith’s team “asking Judge Tonya Chutkan to dismiss this case and the grounds they gave was essentially that the Justice Department has always held historically that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted or indicted[.]”

Dilanian read excerpts of the filing before leveling his emotionally charged hot take trashing voters that, yes, the nearly 77 million Americans who voted for Trump are turning their back on “the lesson of Watergate” that not even presidents are “above the law”:

Dilanian even seemed bummed about a potential report (which would undoubtedly serve as bedside reading for Resistance types):

And Jack Smith, the special counsel is required to file a report to the Attorney General before he leaves office explaining his prosecution decisions and Merrick Garland has a policy of making those reports public we can expect to see a public report, Lester. But, in this case we don’t expect it to go much beyond the volume of material that is already in the public record about both of these criminal cases[.]

Perhaps the network journalist most directly impacted by Smith’s filing would be CBS congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane (who’s more accurate job title should be January 6 correspondent).

Watch below as he had to put on a brave face to assert the case that he would likely have been covering gavel-to-gavel was over:

Moments later, MacFarlane tried to provide a few caveats of consolation for his fellow Resistance fiends, first telling chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes that their hero and Senator-Elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) had publicly tried to pressure Smith to put the probe on pause until 2029 when Trump leaves office.

He also tag-teamed with Cordes to assure viewers that none of this means the case against Smith didn’t have merit (i.e. Trump shouldn’t have been found guilty and jailed):

CORDES: And so, this has more to do with the fact that Trump won the election than it has to do with the merits of the case? Jack Smith isn’t saying anything about whether he believes in these charges or not?

MACFARLANE: Yeah, the argument Jack Smith is making is a procedural one that, because he’s going to be the president-elect, because on January 6, 2025, he’ll be certified the winner. On January 20, he’ll inaugurated, and the policy is clear, you can’t bring criminal cases against a sitting president. He’s not making an argument that he believes his case has weakened, that his case has any flaws, or that there’s a problem with evidence. It’s just that he can’t try a sitting president.

As for ABC’s sources of copium, chief Washington correspondent and three-time anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl implied these cases could have gone forward and tried (and thus have Trump jailed) if the Biden Justice Department would have moved sooner:

A few minutes later, chief legal analyst and NewsNation host Dan Abrams had a similar observation (click “expand”):

[T]here’s another important point which Jonathan touched on, which is about the timing here. The Trump team, as a legal matter, has had an enormous success in delaying these cases, meaning that there were a lot of times when if they hadn’t succeeded, these cases could have moved forward. These cases could have been tried. They potentially could have been resolved. But the Trump team successfully delayed the cases to get to this point where here we are at the precipice of the inauguration.

The second point on that is that at the outset, the DOJ didn’t bring the charges right in 2021. It seemed there was reluctance on the part of the attorney general to bring any criminal prosecution of Donald Trump until the documents case happened, until that point, when he appointed Jack Smith and Jack Smith effectively started making the decisions. So, there are two significant timing issues to think about there: the successes of Trump’s delays and the questions that will be asked about the DOJ, about when they started these cases at the beginning.

Left unsaid by both was the fact that President Biden reportedly agrees and has harbored resentment against Attorney General Merrick Garland.

To see the relevant transcripts from November 26, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).