Ex-Prosecutor Says Jack Smith ‘Hasn’t Just Taken Off The Gloves’ With New Trump Move
Special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday filed a motion that urged U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to put guardrails in place to protect the possible jurors in Donald Trump’s election-subversion case.
Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner suggested Smith hadn’t just “taken off the gloves” with the move. It “looks like he’s boxed them up, taped up the box, and sent them to long-term storage,” Kirschner said on a new episode of his “Justice Matters” podcast.
Smith encouraged Chutkan to streamline the jury selection process with a questionnaire for potential jurors, ban their details from being public, and prohibit direct contact between attorneys and jurors.
The motion referred to Republican 2024 front-runner Trump’s attack on social media of a court official in his civil fraud trial in New York, which prompted a judge to slap the former president with a gag order.
Bullshit. 100%, Grade A Bullshit.
None of these judges or prosecutors have "taken off the gloves" or anything else for that matter. He has been warned more times than anyone cares to count. Despite those warnings, he continues to spread lies, openly call for violence against justice officials, and insult and threaten communities in order to taint the jury pool. The warnings he's been given have all been completely ignored. The guy doesn't even bother to leave the courthouse any more before openly defying the latest warning and all but daring judges to do something about it. And so far, nothing has been done.
Trump has been proven as a threat to national security. He commits crimes on the daily that would have literally anyone else thrown into a federal supermax with the key shot into the sun. As long as this man continues to breathe free air and is allowed to continue making threats with impunity, any statement saying that "the gloves are off" is absurd on its face.
When you revoke Trump's bail and slap him with new charges of jury tampering and witness intimidation, then we'll talk about whether the gloves are off or not. But if all you've got are a bunch of empty threats, don't bother with the bravado.
Kirschner is a bit "extra." I do watch him pretty regularly, because he does cite source material, and he generally makes good observations. This one is not one of those.
It's true that Jack Smith is consistently urging the Court to do something about Trump's stochastic terrorism. As yet, Judge Chutkan hasn't done anything. There will be a hearing to address this on Monday, and we'll find out what happens then. Kirschner misstates this as Judge Chutkan will put a tailored gag order in place, when he should present it as his strong hope.
That's my point. None of them have. And none of them show any real desire to do so, outside of token gestures. Maybe they're just as in fear for their lives as everybody else. But whatever the motivation, the judges flatly refuse to take substantive action. The most they'll do is schedule a hearing for weeks in the future (while Trump continues to puke up his nonsense daily), where they'll discuss maybe possibly having another hearing on whether or not Trump did anything wrong.
And I've watched Kirschner several times myself. My biggest problem with him is that he keeps acting like whatever he's talking about is going to be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back and this time, this time!, the judges have really had enough and are going to do something, even though none of them have actually done a damn thing.
Justice Engoron in New York moved swiftly to address Trump's attacking his clerk, although he stopped short of applying actual consequences. Of all the judges presiding over Trump's many court cases, he's been the most "find out," and even he hasn't really done anything to hold Trump accountable.
Any other criminal defendant would have had bond revoked and be held in detention pending trial long ago. Trump, on the other hand, crickets.
And then Trump responded by leaving the courtroom and attacking the judge himself minutes later. Nothing was done.
No he hasn't. He's barely got to the "and" in "fuck around and find out".
(And for the record, I'm not trying to sound argumentative. I'm just pointing out that even the little he's done has accomplished exactly nothing.)
Totally fair, I don't take offense.
Engoron did fine several Trump attorneys for frivolity, found Trump and his associates liable for fraud with summary judgment, and ruled that the Trump Organization has its business certificates revoked and goes into receivership. Those are most definitely in the world of "find out."
I understand your point and would agree in more normal circumstances.
He fined (if I recall correctly) two judges $7500 each, and I'm sure those will be passed to Trump (not that he'll pay, but still..._).
Trump has been found liable for fraud in the past, so it's not like he cares about his civil record. He's had to pay out $25 million for Trump University settlements. He had to pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million and went on to repeat the same defamation less than 24 hours later. We also do not know how this particular case is going to play out, but once appeals, etc. are factored in, he'll probably be long dead before any of the consequences actually happen. Right now, in Trump's mind, the net impact is $0. Monetary fines, even in the tens of millions of dollars, do exactly nothing to a person who even by realistic estimates is worth at least $2.5 billion with half a billion cash on hand.
So yeah, Engoron has done more than most so I guess he deserves credit for that. However, he still has yet to do anything that's actually impactful. He's more than smart enough to know by now that monetary fines mean nothing to Trump, but yet even he seems to be unwilling to take significant action even after Trump made threats to the judge himself. Outside of his own courtroom. Mere minutes after issuing the limited gag order. If it were anyone else, they'd have been dragged out of that press conference and into a jail cell for contempt of court at the very least.
This seems like common sense when Trump has threatened multiple judges and their families already.
The douche baby dodged his pedo rape case by threatening the victim and her mother too.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/10/trump-classified-documents-motive/
If he sold, or even attempted, or even offered, to sell these documents for gain to anyone at all, he really needs to feel the full pain & consequences of a traitor to his country. Any lengthy prison sentence would be too light but he really needs to be made an example of. Throw the book at him.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953.
Roy Cohn was a prosecutor in that case, then went on to be Trump's mentor... Now, this could be the most ironic event ever. I think it could go a long way in repairing the improper understanding of "ironic", á la Alanis Morisette.
Make a cudgel out of the book, hit him repeatedly about the head and shoulders. Finish him with a combo shot to the gut (to double him over) and then an upper cut blow to knock him out for good!
Shoryuken!
FINISH HIM!!!
The metaphor was so strained I wasn't sure if it meant he was being harder or softer on Trump. Like there is a metaphorical 'take off the gloves' but if they're being FedEx'd to your grandma at some point that represents you giving up on the gloves for good and thus metaphorically the fight entirely.
You’re exactly right. The metaphor was so strained that the resulting broth was perfectly clarified and became the base of a delicious consommé.
bouilla-based
"Taking the gloves off" is a boxing metaphor that means you're about to pummel someone badly by disregarding any rules of engagement. He followed that up with, I don't know, an archivist metaphor? Really weird.
Some interesting wrinkles:
Everything that he outlines per this article is literally just enforcement of the rules. The jury is not to be prejudiced or intimidated, which should be obvious, and therefore these limits are already in place.
The only thing he asks for is to enforce these more strictly, and considering all the comments Trump already made, that's not far fetched. No one here is thinking he is "taking off the gloves", this is just a very self-service view.
Also interesting: Jack Smith used to be impartial when he investigated the events surrounding this case. Considering he's moving forward with the case and a lot of confidence in public, I can only imagine the types of evidence he has seen and marked for discovery.
If I'm being honest I would have hesitation being a juror in this kind of trial for the exact reasons the special prosecutor is talking about.
I would love to be a juror in that trial. If soldiers can give their lives fighting for our country, this sort of civic duty seems like the least I could do.
This is one of the things that worries me. The damage may have already been done and may be irreversible.
I'm also going to be completely honest: If there were any chance I'd be sitting on a jury for a Trump trial, I'd skip jury duty and take the punishment for that before even considering showing up. Take a look at the rise in political violence. Take a look at what happened to the two election workers from GA. Take a look at the grand jurors who have had their information doxxed. Prosecutors and judges having to take on extra security. Witnesses who need to go into hiding. And he hasn't even been convicted yet. Heck, the trials haven't even begun.
Nope. Slap me with a fine. Throw me in jail for a few days. I'm OK with that. What I'm not OK with is my life and the lives of my family members being completely upended and receiving regular death threats because a lone-wolf MAGA nut thinks I might be on a jury. I'll pass, thank you. Never mind the stress of it all, I wouldn't have anywhere close to the money necessary to keep myself and my family safe if either Trump or one of his followers decide that I look like a good enough target.
I would not be surprised if there are many others who feel the same way. I could easily see any of these cases come grinding to a screeching halt because jury selection is nigh-on impossible. There are plenty of RICO cases right now that have been stalled in the courts for months because of jury selection issues, and if they have that much trouble seating juries for that, imagine what seating a jury for a Trump trial is going to be like with all the credible threats of violence flying around.
And IMO, if anything happens to any of the people involved in these cases, good luck getting a jury to be seated at all; it'll be virtually impossible to do so once they can say "I'll pass after what happened to the last guy."
Recognizing your solid points: it is because this case is so high profile that you can continue to find jurors. People will be willing to become jurors even if it means they become martyrs because this would fix them on the right side of history.
The problem with that is (a) finding enough of them that are willing to take the risk, and (b) having them not be weeded out during the jury selection process for being too biased against Trump. I do agree that some would be willing to do it, but I'm skeptical about whether they'd be able to get the chance.