Special Counsel

Six hundred and thirty-nine thousand. Thanks to the indefatigable Chuck Grassley, we now know that that’s the number of individuals whose names Special Counsel Jack Smith hoovered up for Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice when Joe Biden occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (“Occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” it may almost go without saying, seems more accurate than saying “when Biden was president.”)  Senator Grassley has been terrier-like in pursuing evidence of wrongdoing by people like Jack Smith, Merrick Garland and their many confrères in the deep state, which is to say, the Democrat State. Grassley had earlier shown that nearly 5,000 GOP donor checks, mostly for piddly amounts, had been collected as “evidence” by Garland’s minions.

Special counsels have proven themselves, more often than not, to serve a hungry press corps happy to report salacious and unproven details, and not serious, independent investigations that produce meaningful consequences or assure the public that accountability can be achieved. The latest press catnip is over allegations of misconduct by Jack Smith who was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18, 2022, the same week Trump announced his new presidential bid. His remit was to investigate Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified material at Mar-a-Lago. A Republican-controlled Congress now has to decide what to do with a special counsel who may have perjured himself while testifying about those investigations.